


vindicate me!

by iamsolarflare



Category: Flux Baddies - Fandom, The Yogscast, flux buddies - Fandom
Genre: "solar why'd you use a half-enderman oc when rythian is right there", (i mean i guess?????), (if you squint), Action, BEHOLD MY MAGNUM OPUS, Gen, Heist, WHICH IS RELEVANT TO MAYBE ONE PERSON, and also tungsten does what he wants, and now for some genre tags, archrivals, because i only know how to write the flux buddies/baddies, just a bunch of fun to write, villain buddy comedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2019-08-19 22:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16543745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamsolarflare/pseuds/iamsolarflare
Summary: Usually, Lalnable Hector's happy to take the fall for a crime. It's not like he hasn't committed several scientific sins (and also racked up several kidnapping and murder charges). But when he finally bites back against a crime that he definitely wouldn't commit, there's an ultimatum issued his way - banishment or death, they say. Pick your poison.Meanwhile, worldhopping vigilante Tungsten Raster has caught wind of some local government corruption going around, and he's not going to stand idly by - especially if they're going to frame his arch-nemesis for it before the two of them get a chance to have a proper throwdown. Plus, since he's been working with one of Hec's failed clone projects, he might as well keep the guy around.Specimen Echo 3-B, "Drei Warpborn", is that failed clone. By all rights, she shouldn't be alive, let alone intelligent and fully functional. She's an abomination of science and probably a perversion of every law of magic imaginable.A mad scientist, a half-Enderman, a monster, a clone, and a handful of other rogues... shouldn't have any standing chance against the force of a government crackdown. But they'll do their damndest.Oh, they will.





	1. vm-1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mathonwys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathonwys/gifts).



> these versions of lalnable and five are highly inspired by/directly ripped from leo's old flux baddies rp blog, @wellcatchyou on tumblr! hence why this story is a gift to them.
> 
> the version of specimen 3 in this fic is the same one that hails from the "cloning logs" fic i wrote a while back.
> 
> tungsten is a minecraft oc from a story i really should've finished by now - there's not going to be a lot of backstory on him, i'm sorry if his existence is confusing

_ Guess this really is the epitome of a dark and stormy night, _ the tall man thought as he weaved his careful progress between tightly packed trees.  _ That’s weirdly cliched. _

It was definitely odd that whenever he went to find his arch-rival, the environment seemed to conspire to be as ominous and dramatic as possible - first it’d been a silent, clear night in a redwood forest, then a meeting in the dead of night across a campfire in the middle of a different forest, and  _ now _ Tungsten’s latest endeavor to formally confront his favorite foil saw him in the middle of a thunderstorm, rain lashing down as he weaved through yet another third forest.

Apparently, he and Hector also had a thing for meeting in forests, didn’t they…

Well, whatever - who was he to break a fun trend? And anyway, he was technically aiming for the outskirts of the guy’s castle lab, not the middle of the woods. That had to count for  _ some _ variation, right? One could only hope.

As usual, he had the element of surprise. He’d had a friend scout out the woods around the castle - she’d reported no surveillance and advised him on a clear, mostly Taintless route towards the gate of the fortress. Hopefully, she’d managed to stay clear of being spotted, herself - Hector kind of had a  _ thing _ against her.

His thought process wandering exceedingly far away from where it had initially started (what he was actually going to  _ say _ to Hector), Tungsten continued his journey through the woods, waving away rain and brush alike. By the time he’d actually gotten to the front of the imposing building, he was trying to parse out exactly how many Post-It note packs he owed Hector, and how many baked goods it would take to equal that amount.

It didn’t take long for him to halt - there was a sharp  _ “pay attention!”  _ from his scout friend, followed by the pricking sensation of being watched by… seemed like two people. He’d gotten the attention of two very dangerous people.

One of whom was currently, unbeknownst to Tungsten,  _ basically tearing his hair out. _

* * *

 

Doctor Lalnable Hector, specifically, was making a very frustrated  _ “MMMMNNNNNGH!”  _ noise as he tried to stop being so obviously scared.

_ I mean, fuck, of COURSE this asshole knows where I live! Why wouldn’t he! And of FUCKING COURSE he’d show up after that scandal! _

_ “God FUCKING damnit!” _

...Aaaaand he’d said that last part out loud. Yelled it, actually.

Five, ever the observant companion, poked their head in from the control-room booth. He’d put them in charge of systems at HQ when they’d pointed out some genuinely good ideas, like “maybe we shouldn’t have an easily-accessed self destruct mechanism” and “maybe it shouldn’t have the same password as everything else” and of course, the genius “actually, do we really  _ need _ a self-destruct?”

Look.  _ Look. _ He was just trying to be a mad scientist. He’d assumed it was important to have a self-destruct button somewhere.

“Hey, Boss, should we, like, shoot him?” they drawled, blowing a strand of wispy black hair out from in front of their face. “It’s not like that other  _ freak _ is with him.”

Hector sat down heavily in his spinning chair, accidentally pushing it backwards several feet and nearly knocking over a bookshelf onto his head. He almost accepted his fate. It’d be easier than having to deal with Tungsten Raster. So,  _ so _ much easier.

“Don’t bother. He’ll just teleport inside and kill us. Or release another horde of Xenomorphs or something.”

_ Or throw a brick through the window letting me know that he made a fresh batch of banana bread or whatever and that it’s in the fridge _ .

The main problem was that Tungsten was very unpredictable. The other problem was that he was very stabby.

Keeping all that in mind, he rolled his chair back into place, stood up, and knocked on the door to the control room politely.

“Yo Boss, you sound like you’re a serial killer coming to murder me.” Five opened the door nonchalantly, though their face was somewhat grim.

_ I thought I knocked lightly! Fucking hell, I can’t let the stress get to me. _

Hector cleared his throat, tried to drop his voice down half an octave so he wasn’t a squeaky-toy of a man, and walked into the room, trying to keep his shoulders back. “Five, I’m going to use the loudspeaker system.”

“Cool.” They offered him their chair, sliding another one under themself before spinning their chair back to a second console. “If he moves imma shoot him.”

“Seriously. Don’t bother.” Hector rolled his eyes, then took a deep breath and cleared his throat.

Right, so. Goggles over his eyes. Make his hair a little more messy. Adjust the bloodstained jacket. Try not to think about how easy it would be for Tungsten to murder the shit out of him. Hope he wasn’t buying into the latest story. Just play the villain.

He turned on the commlink.

“Tungsten. You’re back.”

* * *

 

Hector sounded different. A lot more controlled, like he was holding something back. From the tremble in his voice, it  _ almost _ sounded like rage.

Even though he knew the man fairly well and had a decent backup plan or five, Tungsten found himself somewhat on edge. Something had changed, and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Still, why the heck would he let Hector know something like that?

He leaned casually against a large iron bar jutting out of the ground (probably there for the Aesthetic) and grinned at the cameras he knew were there.

“Hector! Long time no see! How was the zucchini bread?” He waved a hand up lazily.

“Cut to the fucking chase. I do  _ not _ have the patience.”

Holy shit, the guy was  _ testy _ . This wasn’t about him - that’s what he was missing, he hoped. It was about what Hector had been up to recently.

_ Or more accurately, it’s about what he HASN’T been up to. _

“The Canaan-Briggs disaster,” Tungsten began, and then threw himself out of the way as a metal panel in the fortress opened up and tried to spray him with bullets. It didn’t, but it also caught him off-guard - Hector had never straight-up  _ opened fire _ on him. He was hitting a sore subject.

But it’s what he was here to talk to Hector about.

“Do you have any  _ last fucking words _ ,” the loudspeaker snarled.

Tungsten dusted off his jacket, trying to look nonchalant and in-control as he looked back up, spreading his arms like the world’s easiest target as the rain lashed around him. 

Luck willing, this was going to work. There was a flash of lightning, an overwhelming smell of ozone -

“It wasn’t you, was it.”

\- And a sharp, piercing  _ CRACK _ .

* * *

 

Five stepped back from the control panel, satisfied.

“I  _ told _ you I could hit him with the railgun.”

Hector rubbed his temples. “Five. He’s not dead.”

They giggled. “Oh, I dunno, Boss. He looks  _ super _ like a pile of ashes.” They whistled to themself as they plugged in a couple of reload commands on the console gleefully.

He just looked out the window, stunned. There was indeed a small, smouldering pile of scrap right next to the iron bar Tungsten had been next to. The halfworlder  _ couldn’t _ be dead, but…

But nothing. The air was silent. Nobody was calling up at him in a snide voice. Nobody was telling him something the  _ government itself _ wanted to keep quiet.

Tungsten was gone? Somehow even putting a question mark next to it didn’t feel tentative enough. The guy  _ had _ to be biding his time.

Hector sat back in his chair, burying his head in his hands. “Five, how the  _ fuck _ did he know about Canaan-Briggs?”

“That some kind of bougie law firm?” Sweet Five, still in reverie from the kill. Of course.

“No, it’s - ugh. Forget it.” Having to act evil was exhausting, and also hurting his throat. He slid out of the chair and onto the ground, face still hidden by his hands.

Five came up behind him, flicking him on the back of the neck - he flinched in pain, because goddamnit their nails were  _ sharp _ .

“Why’re you so gloomy, Lal-na-ble? The one dude who was really bugging us is  _ dead _ ~!”

Their valley-girl murder-charm was not working on him. Hector was having a really, really shitty day.

“Five, remember that bank slash research lab building that collapsed?” he said, muffled through the palms of his hands.

“Ohhh,  _ that _ Canaan-Briggs! You blew it up very good. Went  _ kboosh! _ Chunks of building  _ everywhere! _ It was a  _ great _ show.”

“I didn’t blow it up.”

“Of  _ course _ you did! I mean,  _ technically _ the explosive charges placed at points of vulnerability did the explodening, but  _ you _ were the one who planted them!”

He just sort of retreated further into Bloody Lab Coat Town. “No, I actually didn’t have anything to do with it. And the fact that someone knows-”

“- _ knew- _ ”

“-this is a big problem.” He sat up just a little bit, trying to get the dust bunnies off of his jeans. Five interrupting him had barely registered.

“You look at Tungsten Raster,” Hector said gravely, “and you just  _ try _ to convince me he didn’t tell anyone else.”

“Can’t look at him, Boss! He’s Delta-Echo-Alpha-Delta.” Five’s cheerfulness was getting grating. “He’s a tiny pile of ashes! That’ll teach him to be tall. Better target for a railgun.”

Ashes.

A railgun.

Hector stood up so fast that he hit his head on an open cabinet, entire body flooding with adrenaline. He didn’t even notice the pain. He didn’t have  _ time _ to worry about the fact that his scalp felt slightly stickier and moister where he’d banged it. Every single cell in his body was just in full-on  _ panic mode _ .

He gripped Five by one shoulder, not even  _ trying _ to keep up a composed image. Too late for that now.

_ “Railguns do not turn people to ashes.” _

As if on cue, there was a loud knock at the exit to the control room.

* * *

 

And then they were sitting in the same room - Tungsten inadvertently taking up an entire couch as Hector stared him down from across the coffee table and Five glared from behind the “safety” of the control-room door.

_ This is the worst _ , Hector thought, gritting his teeth in aggravation.  _ He’s literally just toying with us! He’s eating a fucking APPLE! _

Tungsten, meanwhile, took another loud bite of his apple while he tried to figure out what, exactly, he was going to do.  _ Hector shot at me. Or ordered Five to fire. Or Five themself fired. Whichever way it goes, that has NEVER happened before. This is supremely awkward. _

They kept staring at each other, trying to figure out the other’s (nonexistent) game, and eventually Five clapped their hands together.

“Hey! Okay! Y’all need to stop staring deeply into each other’s eyes now! It’s freaky!”

Hector let his shoulders drop immediately, and Tungsten let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding as the weird Real Actual Tension in the room deflated like an untied balloon full of air.

“So,” Tungsten began, putting the apple aside. He leaned back, steepling his fingers and staring up at the ceiling. “Who tried to shoot me with a railgun.”

“Five did,” Hector said immediately, at the same time as they proudly announced “I did!” from behind the door.

Tungsten nodded. “Well, uh, good shot, Five.” He shifted his position slightly, winced - and Hector noticed the front of his shirt was pretty bloodstained. “You got me back in the end.”

Five didn’t respond. Probably because it had sounded like a threat.

_ I hate talking while I’m bleeding out, but I can hardly stop pressing the advantage now. _

“I-”

“-You need to put a bandage on that wound. And also tell me what you know about Canaan-Briggs.” Hector interrupted before he even knew what he was doing, and silently cursed himself for interrupting  _ fucking Tungsten. _ The  _ half-Ender. _ With  _ hydrokinesis _ . Who could  _ kill him _ .

Tungsten didn’t seem too perturbed. He just… silently pulled a roll of bandages out of one of his coat pockets, then instinctively shifted several feet on the couch as Hector threw something at him.

A package of gauze hit the couch cushion where he’d been sitting just moments before. An… ordinary… gauze package. Unopened. Apparently with some antiseptic material in it.

_ Huh _ .

“Thanks for the baked goods,” Hector muttered darkly, looking away as he stuffed his hands back into his lab coat. Mostly he just didn’t want to feel like he was in Tungsten’s debt, and also having the guy bleed out on his couch would be a really anticlimactic way to see the vigilante off.

“You’re welcome,” Tungsten said dryly, very carefully dressing his wound, trying to downplay how bad it was by hiding some of it under his shirt.

Actually, that had kind of sounded douchey, even for him. “Thanks for not finishing the job on me,” he added as an afterthought.

Hector sighed, absently rubbing the bruise on his head. “Doesn’t matter now. Just tell me what you know about the, uh,  _ incident _ , yeah?”

“I know it wasn’t you, for starters.” He’d come here to talk to Hec about this anyway. There wasn’t really a point in being coy about it for literally no reason.

“See, Canaan-Briggs was very, ah,  _ clean _ ,” he continued.

Hector bristled. “Are you saying I can’t conduct a clean operation?”

Tungsten waved a hand. “No, I’m not. I’ve seen you do it before. But you never up and brag about the clean operations you do. Only the ones that blow up massively.”

“I didn’t brag about Canaan-Briggs. I denied it, actually.”  _ For all the fucking good that did me _ , he thought bitterly.

“Exception to the rule. Anyway. I think the best way to prove my point is, ah… hm.” He pulled another bit of gauze out of the package as he tried to piece together exactly  _ how _ he was going to word this. “Uh… remember Arrowway Savante?”

“I destroyed several of their waterfront facilities.” Hector’s face was blank.

“How about Hrentek Inc?”

“Burned down their main factory.”

Tungsten smiled that way-too-wide smile of his, and Hector fought to keep his blank expression as he felt sweat starting to bead up along his skin.

“And I suppose, if I ask directly, you’ll tell me that you blew up Canaan-Brigg’s research lab, yes?”

_ Well, fuck. He really did put it all together. _ Hector’s shoulders sagged further, and he rubbed his temples. “Yeah. That’s what I’m supposed to say.”

_ I thought so. _ Tungsten unwrapped the bandages, starting to tie them around his stomach while he pretended that he didn’t notice Five-

“Hey _ Boss? _ What the  _ fuck? _ ”

Never mind. He could stop pretending that he didn’t notice Five now.

“Since  _ when _ did you, like,  _ not _ do those things you totally said you did? And who’s telling you to  _ say _ you did ‘em anyway? Is it the government? Is the government paying you off?”

“Yes.” Hector turned to Tungsten. “I’m guessing you figured that out, too.”

He nodded. “Police forces “apprehended” ””Lalnable Hector”” mere minutes after the explosion occurred. He’s been given the ”””death””” sentence.” Tungsten’s mocking of quotation marks became increasingly more sarcastic without his meaning to. He’d accidentally buried himself in them. Hells.

“They’re going to execute some schmuck in my place. Either I leave this place behind  _ forever _ , or they’ll put me up there instead.”

“So why didn’t ya just suck the gov’s dick again and say you did it after all, Boss? Like the other times?”

_ Vulgar. But they have a point _ . Tungsten turned to Five and nodded respectfully.

“Because I had a friend there, and none of my contacts warned me they were going to send Canaan-Briggs crashing down.”   


“You have  _ friends? _ ” Five snickered, and Tungsten could practically  _ feel _ the brief pang of rage and hurt from Hector.

“I have friends,” he pointed out mildly, trying to divert their attention from mocking Hec.

“ _ You _ have friends?” Now they were just confused.

_ Oh, fuck me, of COURSE he has friends,  _ Hector thought. Head back in hands. Everything just happened so much.

“Anyway though.” The situation had started to spiral a bit too much for Tungsten’s tastes. “You told them you wouldn’t take the fall for this incident or publically brag about it for them because they killed your friend, I take it?”

Hector nodded slowly, and Tungsten crossed his fingers beneath his jacket as he finished off bandaging himself.  _ I don’t know Five that well. But I REALLY hope they can read the room on this one. _

Five said nothing. Both Hector and Tungsten were secretly, silently relieved.

Unfortunately, it also meant there was a very awkward silence in the room now. Five began to open their mouth, and Hector  _ immediately _ decided to say something before they insulted him again.

“So why’re you here? Enforcing the banishment thing? Just going to kill me?”

Tungsten laughed. It was a hoarse, rough bark, one that kind of made Hector feel insecure about his own evil laugh. What was the  _ point _ in having a drawn-out and menacing cackle if a single  _ HAH!  _ blew it out of the water? Ugh.

“Not even close. I’d like to offer my help.”

“You  _ what.” _

The first awkward silence had been awkward enough. So had the tense one before. This, though, was just - well, Tungsten clearly expected Hector to respond further, but nobody in the room really seemed to have anything to say. A stunned but  _ very uncomfortable _ silence was smothering the room.

_ At least 3-B isn’t here, _ Hector thought.

_ At least he doesn’t know he’ll be working with Drei yet, _ Tungsten thought.

“Seriously, what the  _ fuck _ is going on?” Five glared at Tungsten, then also at Hector in what seemed to be an afterthought.

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised. I’m a  _ vigilante _ . Messing with corrupt government pawns is kind of what I  _ do _ .” Tungsten honestly couldn’t let himself be annoyed with either of them, because it  _ was _ strange to be offering to help, but…

Well, he kinda  _ liked _ having Hector around. And knowing how stubborn the guy was, he would get himself killed trying to rebel against the government without any help.

“I. I just,” Hector sputtered, trying to regain some semblance of composure amid his fear and confusion and slivers of relief. “Fuck?”

“What Boss said.” Five nodded solemnly. “Fuck.”

Tungsten sighed. “If you don’t want my help, then you can always banish yourself for life, I guess.”

“I thought you wanted me  _ dead _ or something!? Why do you  _ care _ all of a sudden?” Before he really even knew what he was actually doing, Hector was just… yelling.

“You’ve been a fucking  _ thorn in my side _ ever since we  _ met! _ You  _ befriended 3-B!  _ You  _ threatened to stab me _ ! You’ve let some of my most unstable experiments out of containment, destroyed parts of my lab, stolen  _ all _ of my sticky notes, randomly used supplies to make  _ baked goods _ , and you let my  _ INFERIOR CLONE _ escape! Who the  _ fuck _ are you to offer me help!?”

Tungsten just sat there, face blank and one hand on his wound, and Hector suddenly felt his stomach drop like he’d made a mistake.

“Well, for one thing, Hec, you’re the first mad scientist I’ve met who treats me as a living person rather than some arbitrary force of nature or an unthinking monster. You’ve got that going for you.”

“I mean. You’re  _ clearly  _ sentient-”

He shook his head. “You’d be surprised how few people act like that’s true. There’s a somewhat… rude saying, back where I’m from.”

_ Halfworlder, all monster. _

Five plopped down next to him on the couch, and he instinctively flinched. They  _ had _ shot him with a railgun, after all.

“Uh, I didn’t shoot you so you could start an impromptu venting session, bucko,” they said - and before Tungsten could protest that he was trying to lend some  _ context _ to the situation, they kept talking. “It’s like, whatever. You’re a villain like us, so you gotta be evil sometimes. But never let it be said there’s no honor among thieves or whatever, right?”

Hector also attempted to say something before Five irreparably fucked the situation, but they  _ shush _ ed him aggressively and then just kept talking.

“Hector and you are like, weird archrivals with sexual or friendshipual tension or whatever, and you probably want to do a cool showdown with him or recruit him or something. Also you’re a total anarchist, which I can respect-”   


Tungsten opened his mouth and Five flicked him on the side of the head. “-so like, of  _ course _ you want to go all “row row fight the power” and take down the government with another villain. And, like, we totally-”

“-Five, please stop talking.” Hector was regretting his existence and questioning every decision in his life. Should’ve just let 3-B kill him, really. This was just the worst. The nightmare scenario. The Bad Place.

“All I got from that was that you’re trying to filibuster me into passing out from blood loss,” Tungsten agreed. At least, Hector  _ assumed _ that was an agreement. “But you’re not  _ entirely _ wrong. Even if you misunderstand about ninety percent of my intentions.”

... _ Wait, since when did I even have deeper motivations in this situation? What the hell’s going on with me? I was just going to offer some mercenary assistance. Why am I getting roped into THIS discussion? _

“Actually, I was accepting your help offer, since Boss is too much of a scaredy-cat to do it himself. Let’s fuck up some government goons.”

Hector slammed a fist on the table, and both Five and Tungsten turned to him, silent and somewhat confused.

“For  _ fuck’s  _ sake,” he began, and then realized he didn’t know where he was going next - both Five’s imposition on his opinions and Tungsten’s weird behavior and everything were just blurring together in one indistinct swirling orb of brain hell.

“Just... let me get my  _ thoughts _ in place,” he managed to awkwardly piece together.

Tungsten nodded, not really wanting to say more, and then watched as Hector leaned back, put both hands over his face, and let out a muffled but still very loud  _ ARRRRRGHHHHH _ .

“Seems like we’re a team,” Five said smugly. “I’ll make the friendship bracelets.”


	2. vm-2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boy howdy!

“I changed my mind. We’re not a team and you’re not getting a friendship bracelet. Fucker.”

Tungsten had been expecting someone to get upset at him when he laid out the groundwork for their team. He’d just sort of assumed it’d be Hector, though - not Five, who seemed very much the type to be up for whatever.

But no - Hector had sighed and buried his head in his hands, agreeing, and it was  _ Five _ of all people who adamantly refused to come on board.

“Look, I am  _ not _ working with that freak of nature! Especially when it’s made of  _ me!” _

“You’re both made of the same person, Five-” Hector began, and then instantly regretted it as they turned on him.

“Uh,  _ yeah _ , but I’m  _ way _ better, and I don’t need some half-baked clone monstrosity showing me up!”

“Her name  _ is _ Drei,” Tungsten pointed out mildly, somewhat feeling the need to take the heat off of Hector a bit. “And, for the record, she’s actually mellowed out somewhat.”

“She’s still  _ creepy!” _ Five retorted, and at that Hector did have to agree somewhat.

“I… well, Tungsten, you  _ know _ my hang-up with 3-B.” His head was pounding - there was going to be a headache that hit him like a truck at any moment, equal parts fear, stress, and anger.

“I do, yeah. But I promise, she’s a lot less, uh -” Tungsten waved a hand as he racked his brain for the right words. “- Like you? Less evil.”

“Ooh,  _ burn _ ,” Five said instinctively. “Actually never mind that sounded like I was advocating for her. Burn cream applied.”

Yeah. There was the headache. He rubbed his temples, head starting to spin. He really, really didn’t want to face 3-B - well,  _ Drei _ \- with only Tungsten by his side. But he  _ also _ didn’t want Five to straight-up commit a clone murder just because they didn’t like Drei existing.

“Look, don’t you need someone to hold down the fort while you’re gone? I could be Bella Donna. Be all charming and shit, run mission control, and most importantly  _ not _ be around that freak accident.”

Tungsten opened his mouth to instinctively shoot the idea down, and then stopped. Partly because he actually kind of agreed with the idea. Partly because, well.

“Your cover name is Bella Donna.”

“Yes? What, you jealous or something?”

“No?”

“Oh, you  _ so _ are jealous, aren’t you.”

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to shatter their illusion of having a cool and discreet codename. He just couldn’t.

“Sure. I’m jealous. Let’s go with that.” He ran a hand through his hair, trying to ignore the slow, throbbing pain still in his stomach as the railgun wound tried to heal. “Hector? What do you think of letting Five run comms? It might actually work out pretty well.”

Five in control of the castle? Honestly, Hector could think of worse outcomes. It’s not like the government knew where exactly he holed up, and it’d mean he  _ technically _ wasn’t on his own with Tungsten and Drei…

“All right. We can give it a shot.”

_ “Yessss,” _ Five said, fist-pumping excessively. “You won’t regret this, Boss!”

“But,” he said, and both Tungsten and Five turned to him, “there’s one thing you  _ will _ need to do.”

“Whazzat?”

“You can’t guard a castle on your own merits. You’ll want to initiate Project Echo-Ten.”

_ Project Echo-Ten? _

That set off major alarm bells in Tungsten’s head. This wasn’t something Hector had ever even  _ mentioned _ a single time. No offhanded dropping of the name in a showdown, nothing on any notes he’d surreptitiously sneaked a look at, certainly nothing even the  _ government _ was aware of.

And that didn’t bode well, because Hector wasn’t great at keeping things  _ this _ secret unless they were very,  _ very _ important.

_ Drei, you heard of Project Echo-Ten while you were around Hector? _ He crossed his fingers, hoping that she could still pick up on his wavelength.

The good news - she could. The bad news - her response was “ _ nope, i’m sorry. _ ” That meant Echo-Ten was probably a new experiment of some kind - and given that Hector had a  _ lot _ of things he was very good with, he didn’t have  _ any _ idea what type of thing the new “Project” could be.

“-not sure if it’ll even work, y’know?” Five was saying as he snapped back to focus. “Like, Echo-Ten is  _ completely _ untested. That shit could backfire  _ hard _ .”

Tungsten cleared his throat. “What, exactly, is Project Echo-Ten?”

“It’s-” Five began, and Hector waved a hand to cut them off.

“-an automated defense system for the castle. Uses sonar and other sound scanners to detect even the slightest shift in air movements and determine if they belong to threats. It’ll make it easier for Five to manage the castle without having to actively play lookout at all times.”

Five looked confused for a second before their face hardened into understanding. “Yeah, Boss explains it better than I do.”

_ Is that so _ .

“Hector.”

“What is it.” He stared Tungsten down evenly, removing a hand from his temples and tapping them against his thigh impatiently.

Tungsten leaned forward, steepling his fingers, eyes narrowed, staring back and grinning like he was on to Hector’s shit. He didn’t believe that. Not for a second.

“What, exactly, is Project Echo-Ten? And I mean the  _ truth _ .”

Hector’s facial expression didn’t change. “I already told you what it is. Unless you want me to go into every agonizing detail of the science behind it, you already know the truth. Not everything is a lie.”

...He couldn’t tell. Somehow, despite how well he knew Hector, despite usually being able to intimidate the truth out of the man, despite his gut feeling that  _ something _ wasn’t right here, he  _ could not tell _ if Hector was still lying.

He’d just have to trust that “Project Echo-Ten” wasn’t code for “shoot Tungsten as soon as he leaves the castle” or something.

“All right.” He sat back, sense of the pain in his stomach returning as the temporary burst of adrenaline faded. “I don’t entirely believe you, but I think you’re probably not going to try to kill me a second time.”

_ Thank FUCK, _ Hector thought, trying his best not to let out a giant exhale in relief.  _ He bought it. Now I don’t have to explain what Project Echo-Ten ACTUALLY is and why I felt the need to create it. _

It’s not like it mattered, anyway. If everything went well, Tungsten wouldn’t ever have to know anything about Echo-Ten besides the lie Hector had spun off the top of his head. And it really helped avoiding the awkward conversation he would’ve had to have otherwise.

“So,” Five said.

“So,” Tungsten echoed.

“So,” Hector added on awkwardly, trying to figure out what to say next.

He rubbed his head, uncomfortable with the silence that had settled over the room - for a brief moment, he looked over towards Tungsten and saw the same awkwardness reflected back. Everything just happened so _ fucking _ much.

Tungsten brushed off his coat and stood up, wobbling just a slight bit as he adjusted his stance to agitate his wound less. “Hector, are you up to go meet with Drei?”

“No. Let me get prepared first.” Technically, he would  _ never _ be prepared to go meet with Drei, but it was sort of a tough situation where he’d probably die via government if he didn’t.

However, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to arm himself to high hell and then some. It’d at least make him feel a little safer, he figured.

Hector stood up as well, adjusted his goggles (wincing as they rubbed against the sore spot on his head), and tried to look like he knew what he was doing.  
“I’m going to my armory. We’ll meet outside in five minutes.”

He left the room in a hurry, leaving Five and Tungsten awkwardly behind.

* * *

Five minutes later, it was Five awkwardly waving Tungsten and Hector goodbye as the two stood in front of the gates to the castle lab, yelling “GOOD LUCK DON’T DIE” down at the duo before turning away.   


Promising.

Hector hefted his Nether Bellows with both hands, holding the makeshift flamethrower close to his chest like it was a precious child and not, well, a makeshift flamethrower. It was warm against the rain, and that made him feel a little better about what he was getting himself into.

He’d kitted himself up as discreetly as possible, besides the Bellows - some light armor underneath his clothing, heavier boots and more protective gloves, and a couple of other weapons that sat harmlessly in his pockets. He wasn’t armed to the  _ teeth,  _ per se, but he was fairly well-off in terms of having to fight unexpectedly.

But this was Drei he might have to fight, not some ordinary person. If she wanted him dead, he’d probably end up dead pretty fast. All these fancy gadgets were little more than comfort items.

Hector could only wonder at how calm Tungsten was with this situation.

Tungsten shifted his weight uncomfortably as he looked towards the forest and the rendezvous point he’d set up with Drei. It wasn’t far away, and Five could still watch Hector’s back from the tower without having to engage directly with their clone sibling.

His stomach hurt still - he was pretty sure it was a serious wound, and he’d need to patch it somehow. If Drei happened to decide to blame Hector for it, then everything was going to go downhill very fast, and the government probably wouldn’t need to threaten Hector anymore.

He wasn’t good with negotiations. He’d always been the type to act first and talk later - do research on people to find out where they stand, sure, but carefully navigating people through the gauntlet that was social niceties to make sure everyone felt like they’d come out on top was beyond him.

Tungsten was good at escalating things. Not so much at deescalating them. The fact that all of this could easily go south scared him, frankly.

The two might easily have continued on forever through the forest in their uncertain confidence had the air not changed quality - it suddenly felt thick in Tungsten’s throat, stinging against the bruise on Hector’s head. There was weight here, and they both felt it.

Hector surprised himself by speaking first. “I take it we’re here.”

Tungsten nodded, unwilling to speak all of a sudden. Leaving Drei’s presence for a while and then suddenly re-entering her general area always seemed to give him whiplash, and he wasn’t even sure how awful his voice would sound if he were to speak. The silence here felt deliberate, and he didn’t want to break it.

Something rustled in the trees, and a black-and-purple shape dropped down from above. Hector’s breath caught in his throat as the shape rose up from the ground, taking a humanoid form - matted black hair covering their eyes, twisting strands of dark purple rising from their open skin, an odd wing of Tainted material protruding from their back.

Specimen Echo 3-B didn’t look any different from when he’d put them back in stasis. It was like he’d been transported back in time to when it had happened, wiping sweat off his brow as the monster in containment sat patiently, staring at him through dead eyes as he plugged in the codes to lock them away.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck, fuck _ fuck. _ He was going to die here.

“ _ tungsten! you’re back! and hector! long time no see! hi! _ ”

“Hey, Drei.” At least for Tungsten, hearing Drei  _ speak _ was enough to break the weird feeling in his gut. For all her strangeness, she was still at heart an enthusiastic and well-meaning person, even if the grin she gave him was lopsided and a bit too wide. “Sorry we’re a little late. Hec and I had to catch up first.”

She nodded understandingly. “ _ i get it. i get it. _ ”

Drei turned towards Hector, and he instinctively clutched his Nether Bellows even tighter as his heart skipped a beat. Every single cell in his body was screaming at him to  _ fucking run _ , but his fight-or-flight responses had apparently decided that “freeze” was the best bet. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t even flinch as Drei grinned at him.

Did Tungsten know this history? Had he brought Hector out here just to suffer under the weight of his scientific sins before he died? Maybe all of this, the Canaan-Briggs thing, maybe all of it had been arranged just so, right here and right now, 3-B could get her revenge. Could tear him apart as Tungsten watched.

“Hec, you okay?” That was him. The half-Ender. The architect of his demise, reaching out and… gently placing a hand on his shoulder.

He felt his knees starting to buckle and tried to lock them in place as the world started spinning. This was bad. This was very, very bad. He heard Drei say something, but couldn’t really parse any of it. Not now. No, not now.

“ _ i think he might be having a panic attack _ ,” Drei said, and Tungsten finally understood why Hector had locked up and frozen as soon as he’d seen Drei. The thing was, she hadn’t said much negative about the time she’d spent around Hector, and didn’t seem to blame him for putting her in stasis - she seemed to like the guy, and that was part of why Tungsten was trying to keep him around.

_ But Hector’s view on this could be entirely different _ . He’d seen people freeze up like this before, and seeing it in this context felt entirely different.  _ He thinks he’s about to die _ .

Shit. He didn’t actually know how to go about fixing this. Usually he was the one causing that panic, and he  _ didn’t know _ how to stop someone from feeling that way.

Tungsten took a breath in, kept his hand as lightly as possible on Hector’s shoulder. “Hey. I’m not letting my arch-nemesis die on me like this.”

“ _ Boss, your vitals are going buckwild, and I think I heard Mister Tall Dark And Shithead say “die,” d’you need me to, like, shoot him?” _ Five’s voice crackled in Hector’s ear, and he spun around as he forgot for several seconds that he’d brought a commlink with him.

Tungsten awkwardly just sort of let him look around, trying not to loom. Difficult when he was way too tall, but he didn’t want to intimidate the guy any more.

“Five- right. Right. Five. Hey. I’m fine. I’m… fine. Drei’s here.”

“ _ Oh, THAT bitch? Can I shoot HER instead? _ ”

“No.”

“ _Booooooring._ _Welp, buzz me if you need me, I got your back!”_

The line clicked off softly, and Hector took a deep breath in, feeling a little better. Not a  _ lot _ better, but a little was more than nothing.

“Right. Sorry about that.” Another deep breath.

Tungsten, surprisingly, did not take the opportunity to mock him. He just nodded and took his hand off of Hector’s shoulder. “It’s fine.”

“ _ sorry about that. _ ” Drei’s tone was apologetic. Drei. Right,  _ that’s _ why he’d been having a panic attack. He’d almost forgotten.

“Uh. It’s okay.” His voice cracked at the most insincere moment possible, and he very much wished he  _ had _ died for a second, because  _ fuck _ he was sounding like a wimp.

Horrible. Just horrible.

“Anyway.” He straightened up, trying to seem like everything was totally normal and fine and he hadn’t just died on the inside.

“I, uh, need your help with not dying.”

Ideally maybe fighting other people too, but.. one step at a time.

“First step’s that I need all four of us to, ah, break into a government facility and steal back some of my documents. That were definitely taken from me in an illegal and corrupt manner.”

They weren’t. He was lying out of his ass.

Tungsten knew this for a fact. After the whole discussion about Echo-Ten earlier, he’d almost let himself believe for a moment that Hector was decent at lying.

Apparently he had believed wrong, because this was the flimsiest lie he’d ever heard. But hey, the documents might not have been corrupt, but as long as he got to get some  _ people _ checked off his to-kill list…

“Sure.”

“ _ Sure? _ ” Hector had  _ not _ been expecting agreement first thing. He hadn’t even expected Tungsten to believe his bullshit.

“Yeah. Let’s do a heist.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> be gay do minecraft leave kudos if you liked this and a comment if you want to scream
> 
> i swear that i didn't intend to go from comedy to "hector has a realistic panic attack" this just happens sometimes (also i PROMISE y'all will get answers on what echo-ten actually is)
> 
> i'm super excited for next chapter! this will be my first time writing a heist. and also these dipshits's first time doing a heist together. wahey!


	3. vm-3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief warning i think i accidentally turned this into weird pain horror at the end of the chapter
> 
> fucking oops

Several plans and a couple of arguments later. Two days, a bit of material-scrounging and some light scoping-out of the place from one “Bella Donna.” That’s what it had taken to get here.

Hector was feeling pretty good now. Maybe not stellar, but he had an okay feeling about this.

He and Tungsten were sitting in a late-night diner, several tables apart - he’d gotten here first, seen Tungsten order a slice of apple pie. Out of the corner of his eye, he could still see part of it on the plate as he occasionally took bites and scribbled something in a notebook - probably last-minute notes or something equally serious.

_They definitely used a load of brown sugar in the topping, that’s something..._

Tungsten had come in late, done some last-minute checks with Drei before sitting down. Honestly, he wasn’t at all on edge about the whole thing, which was why he felt relaxed enough to actually buy something up at the counter. Plus, he liked food that tasted good. And he liked making food that tasted good. Might as well sample some of the former while he was here.

Hector looked all right, Drei seemed in high spirits, and Five was watching their back from up high - she’d found some weird sky-grappling-hook machine in the castle basement and was currently hovering many, many feet in the air on what Tungsten had to admit was a stellar vantage point both in terms of being a sniper nest and also being extra as all get-out.

He took another bite of pie, tried to figure out exactly what kind of apple was being used in the filling - and heard Drei’s voice.

“ _the security guards are switching in two minutes._ ”

Time to go. He stood up, tossed some change onto the counter, flung his coat back on, and left.

Hector stayed behind, rubbing his temples. He was feeling good about this, but pre-heist stress was always something he ended up with. A twisted sort of stage fright, basically.

One minute passed. His commlink crackled.

“ _Boss, we got your in.”_

Excellent. He stood up, dusted off his coat, walked out trying to ignore the buzzing feeling in his head - adrenaline again, he was sure of it.

Out into the street, under light fog and a barely-perceptible drizzle that clouded up his goggles as he ducked into a back alleyway to grab his gear. He was basically autopiloting right now, and nothing was going to stop him in the throes of preparing to do something rather illegal and extremely cool.

Hector idly spun the disc for his bloodbound sword as he headed towards the back entrance, ready to raise some hell.

* * *

 

Tungsten, meanwhile, sat on a tree overlooking the building. He wasn’t sure of the facility’s name, but he knew this much - this was where important records were kept, and where a certain target spent her hours.

Karyn. It was, really, an _awful_ name - the extra Y killed him - but it only made sense she was an awful person.

He’d had an eye on her long before he’d figured out Hector was scapegoating - pretty recently after he’d settled down a temporary base in this dimension, actually. She radiated that aura of someone who had done some pretty bad things to stay where they were, and worse yet she seemed utterly _smug_ about it.

Her death might make things more complicated for him, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have a bounty already.

Tungsten felt Five’s gaze flick to him for just a second, and pictured the room he was about to endshift to as clearly as possible, then jumped down off the tree - and into the basement of the building.

It wasn’t the change of scenery that gave him momentary whiplash, but the odor - the air had gone from clear and crisp (if slightly smelling like gasoline from the cars around) to musty and damp, laden with the faint smell of mold. He stifled a cough as he looked around the new environment - he knew what he’d see, of course, but minor things could always have changed.

Boxes of office supplies, long-forgotten, water dripping from leaky pipes attached to a slightly rusty water boiler. Some old banged-up filing cabinets, a freezer weakly humming, an obsolete water cooler. This was the place, and it hadn’t changed since Drei had snuck in to take pictures of it. In fact, he suddenly felt pretty stupid for assuming it would have - this basement looked like it hadn’t changed in _years_.

He didn’t even want to _think_ about what horrors lurked inside the old freezer. Instead, he turned his back and put one hand to his ear, muttering something in a low tone.

“CK to Hex. I’m in.”

* * *

 

Hector had no idea why they were using codenames, but he took solace in the fact that his sounded the best. “CK” was just abbreviations, “Bella” was… fucking silly, he could admit that to himself now that he wasn’t right next to Five, and Drei wasn’t even _using_ a codename. “Hex”, however, sounded pretty badass.

So it was with just a touch of smugness that he answered his buzzing commlink.

“Understood. So am I.”

There were two unconscious security guards on the ground in front of him - one, he’d jumped in an alleyway and hit over the head with his gun (yes, flamethrowers were not usually the right things to pistol-whip people with, but his was sturdy and also in his hands at the time). The other, well…

Hector crouched down and daintily plucked a small dart out of the second man’s calf. Five had sniped him with some kind of concoction that they swore up and down was _“totally_ not lethal, Boss, though they’re gonna _wish_ they were dead when they wake up.”

He didn’t put it past them to have actually poisoned the dart, though. He’d burn that bridge when he came to it. Instead, he stabbed the dart into the other guy’s leg, counted to ten, and then pulled it back out. Hopefully this’d keep them out for the same amount of time.

“Hex to Bella. How long do your darts last on someone?”

They _tsk_ ed impatiently at him. “What you need to worry about, Boss - er, _Hex_ \- is when the next guard comes on shift.”

“Which is?”

“I dunno. Drei figured that out. I was ignoring her.”

Of _course_ they were. It’s like Five was _trying_ to sabotage this heist or something.

“Hex to CK. How long do we have before the next guard finds out his pals are out cold?”

“Two and a half hours,” Tungsten responded immediately, and Hector sighed in relief. At least one person on the team had their shit together. One and a half if you counted him.

So, they had roughly two hours to be in and out, accounting for the fact that the next guard might come in early. Not that _he’d_ want to come in early to a graveyard shift on security in the middle of the fucking night, but some ass might, so… two hours it was.

He went over what the guards were carrying and found that it was absolutely fucking nothing. One guy had a fidget spinner in his left shirt pocket. They both had a radio and security batons. It was like the world’s most boring loot box in here. He’d at least hoped for a wallet or cell phone or something, but apparently they either didn’t bring their personal belongings to work or they stored them somewhere else.

...Hector was still taking the fidget spinner, though. He actually needed something to fidget with when he was nervous, and just _buying_ something would not nearly keep up his image. A _stolen_ spinner was a little more like it, though.

Enough distractions. He needed to get moving.

Tucking his ill-gotten gain into one of his coat pockets, he headed out down the hall - head up, eyes forward, goggles on. He was supposed to be here, he knew what he was doing.

Amazing how you could sneak into any place if you looked like you were important and had somewhere to be.

* * *

 

Tungsten had taken a slightly different tactic.

Hector’s dimension was ill-prepared for a halfworlder like him - the millisecond someone’s eyes flicked to him, he’d endshift to an empty hall, and that would be it. No alarm raised, no “I thought I saw someone” to a fellow employee or guard. It was kind of pathetic, but at least he was keeping his innocent-body-count down.

He was supposed to be headed towards the documents room, but Hector seemed like he had that together. He’d just take a quick detour, murder someone well-deserving of it, and then rendezvous back with the scientist before anyone noticed. Clean and simple.

That in mind, he was headed upstairs, towards the corporate offices. There were elevators, of course, but considering that he was kind of a distinctive face on this world’s Most Wanted list, it’d be pretty awkward to have to hold the door open for someone. Instead, he’d be taking the stairs.

Which sucked. Climbing stairs sucked.

He slipped into a side door and immediately was overwhelmed by a shitton of dust, because apparently everyone else in this building also thought that climbing stairs sucked and didn’t use them. Even in the dim light of the stairwell, filtered through windows and lightbulbs that hadn’t been changed for who _knows_ how long, there was dust everywhere - it drifted through the air. He felt like he was going to come down with some weird lung condition just by standing here.

But Tungsten had resigned himself to climbing the stairs, and climb them he would.

One foot, then the next. Listen for sounds, brace himself for the sound of a door opening.

“CK to Bella. Just curious, what floor are the corp offices on?”

“Shove off,” they responded, which he probably should have expected from someone who’d tried to shoot him with a railgun.

 _“floor five,”_ said Drei, their voice floating into his head out of the dust, and he smiled. At least _someone_ had his back.

Floor five.

He kept climbing stairs, not stopping as Drei passed along another message again. _“shoot! tell hec the archives has its own security guard!”_

“CK to Hex. Drei has a h-”

“Tun- CK, I really don’t have the mental capacity to deal with whatever Drei’s doing right now. I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’m almost at the archives.”

Oh, come _on_. “Hex. It’s about-”

“Seriously, I don’t have the energy.”

Well, _shit_ . Hector was walking right into trouble, and he was unable to warn him because for some _goddamned_ reason, the guy wouldn’t listen to anything regarding Drei.

He wasn’t even going to bother telling Five. The second _they_ heard Drei’s name, they were liable to turn their sniper rifle on him, given how things had gone so far. Unfortunately, Hector was now on his own vis a vis intel.

It was fine. It was just _fine_. He still had time to kill Karyn before Hec got himself in deep shit.

Especially since he was now at the fifth floor.

Tungsten ducked his head under the doorframe (these halls were barely big enough for someone as tall as him, but the doors made him feel like a _giant_ ) and exited into the hallway.

The lights were all dimmed - which made sense, this was the office area, people weren’t usually staying late here unless they had overtime to do.

Karyn was somewhere here.

He couldn’t afford distractions right now. Tungsten flicked his earpiece off, told Drei not to bother him, and set out down the hall.

* * *

 

_Shit!_

Hector dove behind a filing cabinet as someone opened fire on him from the security desk. In the archives.

He’d been here before, and there _wasn’t_ one there - the blasted thing must have been put in recently. This was, of course, _very_ inconvenient, because it meant there was a guard he hadn’t prepared for.

He pulled out a handgun - Five had tossed it to him, there was a note on it that said “ _These are Seeker rounds, so even an idiot like you won’t miss!”_ \- and fired back, trying very hard not to scream loudly in panic.

Because that would be undignified. And even though Hector was scrambling for cover and had hastily shoved his (stolen - er, _nefariously obtained_ ) fidget spinner back in his pocket when the guard had opened fire, he was _not_ undignified.

The Seeker bullet definitely hit the guy, though, because there was a _thud_ and the gunfire stopped short. He wiped the sweat from his brow, put the gun back in his pocket, and peeked out behind the corner.

...There was a pool of blood on the ground. And the dude wasn’t moving. And there was blood coming from the bullet wounds.

And he’d killed someone. And they were dead. In front of him.

“Hex to Fi- Bella. Hex to Bella come in holy shit.”

“Boss?”

“Dead guy.”

They let out a soft huff. “Yeah, boss. It was you or them.”

“I just killed someone.”

“That’s generally how gunfights work.” The fact that he could practically hear Five rolling their eyes was expected, but not comforting.

Hector looked down at the guard - no, the _body_ \- and tried to reconcile what was going on, which was probably harder than it should have been for what was basically an equation (person + bullet = dead person).

He couldn’t handle this. He blew people up, or disintegrated them, or had someone else shoot them from a distance, but he did not shoot people with guns and then stand there over their corpse.

Their cadaver.

“Hex to CK. How do you hide a body?”

No answer.

* * *

 

The halls were perfectly still and empty, only the faint smell of cheap office coffee and papers in the air. The only sound was Tungsten’s footsteps echoing, steady and confident as he headed towards his target.

He couldn’t have asked for a more wonderfully dramatic setting. Everything was going _fantastic_.

Tungsten took a sharp turn, headed towards a windows-facing office at the end of the next hallway. This was it, and he was frankly quite excited to watch Karyn die at his hands. It was going to be cathartic as all _fuck._

He reached the door and calmly punched through the weak plywood on the door, ripping it apart as he stepped through. Sure, he was going to have to pick splinters out of his hands later, but it was _so_ worth it for the dramatic effect.

“You could have knocked.”

Honestly, a bit of a let-down that Karyn didn’t seem even the slightest bit nervous. He crossed his arms as she spun around in her office chair to face him.

 _Gods, could you BE any more stereotypically evil?_ At least Hector was actually _good_ at being intimidating about it. This woman, wearing a pantsuit and a cream-colored collared shirt, just looked… he wasn’t sure. But not great.

“You could have taken a hint,” he responded, leaning his weight against the chair in front of her desk. “It’s not like you weren’t sent plenty of hints that you should knock it off.”

She sniffed at him. _Sniffed_ . As though he were some kind of particularly annoying child. He was going to _strangle_ her in a few moments.

“You’re not really going to accomplish much here,” Karyn said, straightening a stack of papers and putting them aside. “I didn’t get this far by caving in to every threat people threw my way.”

“No. You got this far by, if I recall correctly, a couple of very convenient deaths in upper management and a whole hell of a lot of blackmail.”

“And?”

He pushed the chair aside, put his hands in his pockets to loom over her. “And it bit you in the ass, eventually. Any last words?”

She cocked her head to the side, and then a very sly smile spread across her face as she reached up to a - was that a goddamn _Bluetooth!?_ \- hooked to one ear. “In position.”

There was a sudden _CRACK_ of the sound barrier breaking, and Tungsten hastily endshifted out of the way as he felt a second person’s eyes flick to him.

A clean hole in the glass, ripped through to the door behind him as well. If he’d stayed there a second longer, he’d be dead.

 _Shit_. She had a sniper.

He didn’t have a moment before as whoever was aiming at him fired again and he had to _move_ \- dancing between high-speed shots as the sniper’s gaze flicked to him almost immediately after he moved his position.

This really wasn’t good. Sure, he could keep teleporting for a while, and he had an out, but Karyn was still _perfectly fine_ and she was _right there_ and he couldn’t even stop to get _rid_ of her-

He felt a cracking along his jawbone as something came undone, as the world blurred with purple sparks and started to shift color. Tungsten was so _fucking_ done with this. No more banter.

Karyn’s eyes lit up with a flicker of fear as he turned towards her briefly, eyes blazing, before shifting out of the way of yet another volley. He wasn’t entirely sure what he looked like right now - he didn’t exactly have the time to look into a mirror when he got like this - but it was _good_ to know she wasn’t all mask.

He lunged at her, snarling, skidding across the floor and leaving streaks as he narrowly avoided more shots. Next time he wasn’t going to knock. Next time he wasn’t going to bother with any of that bullshit banter. The crack spread wider, a sharp pain along the sides of his mouth as he roared in fury.

He caught a whiff of something. Smoke, acrid and sulphuric, like the Nether. Not from anything in here, no, it was being carried through the vents -

Ah, _shit_. He’d forgotten about Hector.

He managed to take the brief second needed to turn his own earpiece back on as Karyn power-walked towards one side of the room and the sniper’s eyes flicked off him for a moment to reload.

“CK to Hex! I-”

“You _what!_ ” Hector snapped, nearly peaking the mic on the things. He could hear faint gunshots and the crackling of fire through the link. “You’re supposed to be the _fucking backup_ , Tungsten! And here I am! Without backup!”

“It wasn’t going to take me longer than-”

“You are so full of _shit_.”

Tungsten wiped a bead of sweat off his brow just before the sniper fire started up again. “I _swear_ , it wasn’t supposed to-”

_BANG_

He’d managed to get out of the way, but the shot had grazed his left shoulder. He couldn’t feel the pain, his earlier fit of rage had blotted out that sense, but he felt the movement of his arm strain oddly and felt something sticky drip down and soak into his shirt. This... wasn’t great.

“CK to Bella! Requesting backup!”

“Bella to CK! Shove a cactus up your ass!”

So that wasn’t going to work, then.

Tungsten caught another distinctive whiff of Nether fire and crossed his fingers, hoping Hector was having better luck than he was.

* * *

 

Everything was ablaze.

Hector hadn’t known what to do with the body. He’d just stood there, dazed at the person he’d just killed with his _own hands_ \- technically gun, but _still_ \- until he heard yelling, and then there were more gunshots, and he’d had to dive behind another cabinet, and Tungsten wasn’t responding, and Five wasn’t able to help when the archives had no windows, and he was clutching something and there was _fire_.

Dry, crackling flame, the smell of sulphur and burning flesh and papers set alight. By the time Tungsten turned his commlink back on, Hector was nearly surrounded with fire.

His goggles were on, so at least the soot and ash wasn’t getting into his eyes, but he was starting to choke on the air as it filled with smoke.

Tungsten’s connection was bad, now - constantly popping in and out, full of enderference and - gunshots?

Gunshots. Wherever the half-Ender had gone off to, he was apparently also in trouble too. Which, well, was _really bad_ , because Tungsten was supposed to _be_ backup, not _need_ backup.

“Hex to Bella,” he managed, and then started coughing again. He was going to need to check for lung cancer when he got out of here.   
_If_ he got out of here. He clicked a button on his mic and started recording.

“Situation critical. CK - Tungsten - is preoccupied with something, and I’m trapped in what might be my own funeral pyre. No idea where my documents are. This is the worst way for me to die, but here we a-”  
  
“Don’t write your eulogy just yet, Boss,” Five drawled, their voice echoing weirdly - Hector looked up, and there they were, standing in front of him, carrying what he could only describe as a military-grade Super Soaker and grinning from ear to ear.

 _Thank FUCK for Five_. How he’d survived so long without them as backup, he had no idea.

They strode into the room, beating back flames with their terrifying watergun, and before he could protest they’d slung him over their shoulder and were walking back towards the hallway.

“Bella to CK. Mission failed, retreat and regroup at point C. Over.”

They wrinkled their nose instinctively as Tungsten responded - clearly they were still mad at him - and then stopped short, eyes wide, and broke into a run with Hector still over one shoulder.

“What’s going on?”

“Homeslice got sniped,” Five responded, heading towards the exit as quickly as possible.

* * *

 

“-regroup at point C. Over.”

Tungsten endshifted out of the way of yet another bullet, already sprinting out down the hall as quickly as possible. Karyn would have to wait, he was going to run out of luck soon.

“There’s a -” shift “- sniper -” whoosh “- on me, I’ll -” vwoop “- lose them fi-”

He was too slow. There was a window at the other end of the hall, and he caught sight of a metal eye gleaming, and the sound broke in his ears as he felt something rip through his side.

 _Fuck, that’s the SECOND time this week,_ he thought, and then felt himself hit the ground hard.

He saw red, then black. The pain still didn’t come - at this point, he was probably in shock. There was a lucid moment where he thought about how annoyingly _predictable_ it would be to die like this, but it was just going to happen anyway, and-

A rush of something purple.

The world spun, dropped, as the air choked up and pressed in.

Hard to tell if he was lying on the floor anymore. Hard to tell if there even was a floor.

There was - pain - something searing through his body. He’d burned himself on a piece of metal badly once - had thought it had cooled down and grabbed it with his own hands. Realized too late as the sound of his flesh burning hit him as the same time as the pain breached past his own internal tolerance.

This was not that. This was worse, something frostbite-like inside him, white-hot cold in every vein, and he went to scream in pain and couldn’t even move his mouth -

 _“i’m gonna get you out of here,”_ someone - oh, he knew who - said, and flicked him lightly on the forehead. Somehow he could register that light contact through the pain, no, not quite -

The pain itself abruptly cut off with that flick, then a moment later all senses but his mind, and then he drifted into - not black, not exactly.

Jet-dark purple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [john mulaney voice] so the heist is goin' great!
> 
> rip in shit tungsten (y'all know he's not dead but that won't stop me)
> 
> this is the worst and also only heist i've written it can only get better from here
> 
> oh shit i forgot my outro. be gay do minecraft leave kudos if you liked this story and a comment if you want to yell


	4. vm-4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy Howdy!
> 
> sorry if some of the prose in this chapter gets weird i was kind of in a rush to finish it

“Wake! Up! Now! Bitch!”

Hector looked away as Five continued to shake the very unconscious Tungsten by the shoulders like they’d been doing for the past five minutes. Normally he would’ve stepped in and said “don’t jostle the person with a giant hole in his body” but fuck, he was  _ not _ feeling it right now.

He just stared through the trees at the rising sun and ran through his options.

_ Papers are burned. That’s not good, I needed them to dispute the terms of my contract. Now some snotty higher-up has the only surviving copy of it and they can bring the hammer down as much as they want. _

_ Tungsten is- _ ah, fuck, Tungsten was probably dying. Maybe he should at least check on the guy.

“Five. Knock it off.”

They blinked, then dropped Tungsten back to the ground and retreated, wide-eyed and holding their hands in the air like he was pointing a gun at them. Was he?

He checked his hands briefly. No. No he was not. He just sounded like a shithead today.

“Boss…?”

“Sorry. Just stressed.”

Hector headed over (very reluctantly) to the area where Tungsten was, warily eyeing the still figure of Drei as he passed by.

He squatted down next to the man’s seemingly lifeless body and gingerly checked his wrist for a pulse. There was one, but it was faint. Very faint.

_ Now the nasty part _ . Hector had a good stomach for blood and gore in the abstract, but not quite as much when it came to wounds attached to living people.

He gently moved Tungsten’s jacket aside and very gingerly lifted the tattered shirt up to reveal… Oh.

Oh,  _ fuck _ , that was  _ bad _ .

He took a breath in through gritted teeth as he tried to take in the, uh, very large hole. The rather large hole in the man’s side. It didn’t seem to be bleeding, and he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Medical training was failing him right now, but he’d definitely need a closer look…

Hector hesitantly reached out to touch the bandages over the railgun wound, see how that one was going, and

**“Do you want me to REARRANGE YOUR** **_FUCKING_ ** **INSIDES.”**

Tungsten had grabbed his wrist just short of actually touching the wound, and was holding it in a very uncomfortable bone-hurty position as he raised his other arm to grab Hector by the collar.

The half-ender’s jaw was completely unhinged, a hellmouth of splintering bone and splitting flesh, and thanks to the firm grip on his shirt, he had to stare right at it.

**“DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME,** **_SHITHEAD._ ** **”**

“Tungsten?” he managed to squeak out, and the monster’s eyes widened as he dropped his grip on Hector immediately and, well, suddenly wasn’t a monster anymore, just… an injured person.

“Oh. It’s just you.” Without the horrifying static behind Tungsten’s voice and with his jaw completely back to normal somehow, he actually sounded really bad in an entirely different way. The guy’s voice had always been hoarse and raspy, but this was more strained and generally just… weak. Weak and tired.

“Dude, that was  _ sick _ ,” Five said from somewhere behind Hector’s panicked mental fog. “I think Boss pissed his pants.”

He hadn’t, but now was not the time to get in that argument.

“Sorry. I was just trying to check your wound. How are you even-”

“-Conscious? It’s fine. I’ve had worse.” Tungsten’s hand-wave was supremely unconvincing. He kind of looked like shit.

Hector shook his head - now that Tungsten was awake and not sporting a terrifying Ender’s maw, he found himself pretty annoyed.

“You got yourself shot.  _ Shot _ . And for what? Because last I checked, none of us got what we came there for.” He felt goosebumps rise on his arms, a jolt of nervous energy up his spine as he increasingly realized how much of this was  _ Tungsten’s fucking fault _ .

“You were supposed to be my fucking  _ backup _ , asshole. We could have gotten in and out  _ easily _ if you’d actually have been there! But you had to go off and do god-knows-what while I got shot at and then-”

“-Panicked and used a flamethrower in the middle of the archives?” Tungsten got to his feet, the bitter taste of blood in his mouth as he struggled to stay upright through the haze of pain. He’d be fine. He’d always been  _ fine _ and he would  _ be _ fine. “Face it, Hector, if you could keep your  _ fucking _ cool for half a minute, we both would’ve gotten what we needed out of there. It’s not my fault that you’re  _ awful _ at adapting to unpredictable situations. I even tried to  _ warn  _ you about the guard in the archives, but because the info came from  _ Drei _ you shut me down!”

“I didn’t know you were trying to warn me! You should’ve lead in with “heads up about the archives” and not “Drei says”! You  _ know _ I’m still awkward about what happened to her and the other clones, and during the heist was  _ not _ the time to bring it up!” Hector could suddenly feel the beat of his heart in his chest as he kept talking. “And  _ again _ , you went off on your  _ own! _ There wouldn’t have been a need to “adapt to an unpredictable situation” if you’d stuck to the  _ fucking plan! _ It’s not like you were, I don’t know, there to help me out when I  _ fucking murdered someone-” _

“What kind of mad scientist can’t  _ kill _ a couple people? How many buildings have you blown up, anyway?”

“That’s  _ different _ and you know it!”

“You shouldn’t be having a panic attack over killing  _ one person!” _

“You shouldn’t be so fucking  _ cavalier _ about it, jackass!” He could faintly hear weird Endery static from Tungsten, but it barely even registered that he was putting himself in danger.

And then another voice cut in.

“So, it sounds t’me like this is Drei’s fault, right?” Five drawled.

“ _ what? _ ”

“Oh, shut up, you. I mean, let’s face it, if she wasn’t so creepy, Hec would’ve gotten his intel just fine.” They shook their head disapprovingly, arms crossed. “Like y’said, Boss, Tungsten shoulda lead with something that didn’t mention Drei, sure, but like. If she wasn’t around, then that wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place! Leave it to a defective clone aberration to ruin everything, am I right?”

“She’s kind of the reason why I’m still ali-”

“Nah, you’re just a lucky bitch. Drei or no Drei, you’d have made it out of there.”

Hector had to admit, Five’s logic was… temptingly simple. Just blame Drei for everything, and they could go out and start again. Just… it was totally Drei’s fault, he could-

“ _ if you wanna blame me, that’s okay.” _

“Wuh?” Five turned towards Drei, a look of sheer and utter confusion on their face that Hector could feel on his own features as well.

She raised her hands.  _ “you’re right. i’m a freak. i shouldn’t exist.” _

Tungsten’s adrenaline rush from all the fighting drained from his body quite suddenly, and he felt the pain in his stomach return in full force - he clutched his stomach, tried to stay upright. “It’s not Drei’s fault! If anything, she’s the  _ least _ to blame-”

_ “i don’t care,”  _ she said, expression inscrutable behind dark hair.  _ “blame me if you want.” _

“Drei, you-” he tried again. Seeing self-hatred in someone who he’d grown to consider a friend, family even, was supremely uncomfortable.

_ “listen. you’re going to die of blood loss if we don’t get that wound fixed. so let’s have everyone blame me and then you can get patched up.” _

Ah.

She was right, in a way - he could feel his stance wobbling, the pain worming its way through him incessantly. Tungsten sat down carefully, trying to keep himself lucid through increasingly worse sensations.

“I’m the best,” Five said smugly, and plopped back down onto the ground with a satisfied smirk. He felt bile rise in his throat again.  _ That’s _ what she was getting out of this?

Hector, at least, didn’t seem to satisfied with the conclusion they’d come to. He made his way over towards Tungsten quietly, hands stuffed in his coat pockets, and crouched down next to him.

“Are you going to threaten to kill me in a horrible way again if I try and take a look at that wound and see what I can do?” His voice came out a bit meeker than he’d hoped, but all the anger had left him for the time being, so it’d just have to be Mister Nice Guy for the time being.

“No.”

“Okay. Then I might need to poke at it a bit.”

Tungsten waved his free hand dismissively again. “It’s not going to hurt any more than it already does. Or I’ll pass out, which would also be fine.”

Hector dug around in his coat pockets, then reached into the inside of his labcoat to pull something out of a secret pocket. Which, of course he would have secret pockets, what kind of self-respecting mad genius wouldn’t.

He braced himself and took a good look at the wound again - it was a deep hole, nothing on the other side - the bullet still assumably lodged somewhere in the halfworlder’s guts, which was  _ not _ great.

There was something else, though - thin lavender tendrils snaking out from around the wound, deep purple barely visible through the bloody mess that was Tungsten’s stomach. But it was there, spreading out in an almost flower-like shape and vanishing at the ends.

“Are you  _ Tainted?” _

“Kind of a rude thing to ask someone, isn’t it?” Tungsten’s grin was awkward and clearly rather uncomfortable.

“You know what I meant,” Hector said, shaking his head. “Is this Thaumic corruption?”

He felt someone looking over his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his own skin as his brain registered that the shape in his peripheral vision was, in fact,  _ fucking Drei _ .

_ “not quite,” _ she said, shaking her head solemnly.  _ “well, it’s not taint anyway. i can’t control taint.” _

It took him a couple of seconds to remember that breathing was a thing that people needed to do and consciously start doing so again. “It’s…  _ you’re _ doing that?”

_ “yeah. i’m trying to keep the blood from going out.”  _ She pointed at one slightly misshapen “petal” on the flower, the area becoming brighter purple as her hand came closer to it.  _ “i can stop it from getting worse… but i can’t make it get any better.” _

Hector frowned, trying to put aside how supremely weird doing a pseudo-operation on his archrival alongside one of his failed clones was. “Can you get the bullet out? I have a Potion of Regeneration here, but healing a wound around a whole-ass sniper shot isn’t going to be great.”

Drei nodded.  _ “i can do that. but you’re going to have to work fast.” _

“Alright.” He twirled the small phial between his fingers absently, brow furrowed in concentration. “Then we work fast.”

* * *

 

“Wake! Up! Bitch!”   


...It was happening again.

Tungsten had been drifting in and out of consciousness for a good hour or so, pain slowly ebbing away as he tried very hard not to concentrate on the ongoing operation. He must have fallen asleep towards the end, because now Five was shaking him by the shoulders.

At least he wasn’t going to slip up like he had with Hector. That would’ve just been rude.

“I’m awake. Thanks.”

His voice came out in an annoyed monotone, which was honestly the most fitting tone he could’ve hoped for. He was still only half lucid, but that was just the price to pay for having gotten himself shot.

Tungsten slapped Five’s hand off his shoulder as they continued to shake him, and they dropped him with a spectacular eye-roll.

“Kay, cool. I was booored.”

He elected to ignore them, pushing himself up off the forest floor and looking around for… ah, there Hector was.

The scientist was staring off into the distance, scratching absently at one arm and watching the sun rise again. The look in his eyes was… pained. Panicked, even.

Tungsten sat back down a respectable distance from him, trying not to be intimidating.

“Hec?”

“What.” His voice came out sharply again, that bitter edge back in his tone. Honestly, at this point Hector didn’t really feel like hiding the fact that he was in a bad mood. Tungsten would just have to deal with it.

“...Thanks,” Tungsten said, rubbing the spot where his wound should have been. It’d probably scar, but it was far better than bleeding out into the dirt. “You didn’t have to.”

“What, and let some faceless sniper steal  _ my _ glory? Hah! Not likely.” He surprised himself - turns out, Tungsten wasn’t the only one who could do the sharp bark of laughter.

_ Note to self - I’ve just got to be sufficiently pissed to pull it off. _

The half-Ender nodded. “Point taken. We… really should deal with that sniper before we move on with fixing up your-  _ our _ mess.”

At least he’d corrected himself. Hector would’ve been tempted to stab him if he hadn’t.

“Speaking of messes,” he said, and Tungsten found himself suddenly rather nervous at the cold tone in his rival’s voice, “would you mind explaining why you’re carrying a Taint strain?”

There was dead silence for a good three seconds, far longer than either of them were really comfortable with. Then it carried on for another five more and just became excruciatingly awkward.

“It’s not Taint,” Tungsten finally responded. “Five’s the one that does stuff with Taint.”

“Bull and shit.” Hector tilted his head back to glare at Tungsten. “I  _ trained _ Specimen 3-B. Its - sorry,  _ her _ \- control over Taint was near unparalleled. Just because she mainly uses the wing on her back doesn’t mean she’s not capable of controlling mass areas of-”

“-She doesn’t control it.”

“Aaand I’m out.” Five got to their feet, leaves crunching as they stretched their arms. “Y’all can do exposition about Freakazoid McGee as much as you like, but you’re not gonna do that shit around me.”

“Nobody asked your opinion,” Tungsten snapped back, perhaps a bit harsher than was needed - Five flinched briefly before their features hardened.

“Just ‘cause you didn’t ask doesn’t mean it wasn’t needed. I’m gonna go back to the castle.”

“...Five?” Hector did his best to keep his voice level and even, because he was going to have to lie again and this time it was literally under Tungsten’s nose.

“Yeah, Boss?”

“Do me a favor when you get back, make sure Project Echo-Ten is working smoothly.”

“Roger dodger. Toodles!” Five proceeded to make the world’s most needlessly dramatic exit by shooting fingerpistols at the two of them, backflipping, and then firing a grappling hook into the air at their hovering drone. Tungsten winced internally, and then also externally.

“You really need to teach them to be less extra.”

“I’m working on it.”

* * *

 

Five reached the castle quickly enough, eager to get away from Drei.

They scanned their keycard for the lower levels, took the elevator down, and down deeper. Scanned another keycard at a dead-end, placed their palm on a discreet piece of the wall that doubled as a hand scanner. Scanners scanners scanners. Hector really loved his security.

It wasn’t just Tungsten that Hector didn’t want aware of Echo-Ten. It was the world at large. Even  _ they _ hadn’t been told what the project was until Hector had come into their room one day and told them that his secret project was done.  _ Done _ .

They turned around and headed back for the new door that had opened up - the one to their boss’s cloning labs.

Most of the tanks stood empty, but there was one that still held something - some _ one _ \- in stasis. A man with barely shoulder-length hair, wearing the typical clone outfit of sweatpants and a sleeveless shirt. Scarred all over, but his eyes closed peacefully.

A sign on the tank and a dog-tag around his neck labeled him as ECHO-TEN.

Five took a deep breath, then punched in a few codes and watched the fluid drain out from around the man; he collapsed at the bottom of the tank, then almost immediately slammed a hand against the glass.

“Five! Get me the  _ fuck _ -” His eyes flicked left to right, and his expression became one of complete and utter confusion before he gathered himself. “...Ugh. This is a  _ headache _ .”

“Trust me, I don’t like it any more than you do.” They opened the tank and stepped aside as Echo-Ten stepped out from the tank, wringing out stasis-solution from his hair. “But orders is orders.”

“Mhm. So what’s so desperate that you let  _ us _ out of storage?”

If Five had been a little more lucid, they’d probably have worried a bit about the sudden usage of plural pronouns. But as it was, they were busy enough trying to not do a weird evil laugh about having a huge secret that  _ they _ got to keep from Tungsten. Ooooh it was so good.

“I’ll tell ya once you get yourself sorted out, you’re not the boss of me.”

“Aren’t we - ugh, shit. That  _ is _ confusing.” He rubbed his temples, trying to parse some meaning out of the scrambled fragments of a past he’d never experienced flicking through his head. “Okay.”

“Soooooo. Boss and the twin freak parade are gonna be checking up on me, and I need you t’make yourself scarce for a bit. Need anything to get you settled?”

Echo-Ten looked down at himself, at hands that weren’t quite what he was expecting to see, but were his own.

He set his jaw, forced down his confusion, and looked back up at Five.

“I’m gonna need a coat. And, ideally, a blunt-force weapon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> be gay do minecraft leave kudos if you enjoyed and a like if you want to yell
> 
> we got some big reveals here today lads and non-lads. some real whoppers. and some new mysteries ahead
> 
> tungsten is almost done being shot at! hurray


	5. vm-5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPECIAL THANKS TO AO3 USER DUALCOLOURS your comment spam legitimately reached me at the exact right point when i Really needed some type of affirmation and i may or may not have basically had to run around the house several times before i worked off the huge energy boost that gave me. without your kind words this chapter might not have existed for like, another two months
> 
> anyway it's time for tungsten to get shot at again

“Hey, Hector. Echo-Ten’s still working. What’re you up to?”

Five sounded tired - he could only guess that waking up Echo-Ten had been stressful for them. Wasn’t like he had any other choice, though - Tungsten had been watching him like a hawk the second he’d mentioned the project.

So, yeah. Echo-Ten was a clone. He’d forced down his nerves as much as possible to lie straight to Tungsten’s face - yet again - that Project Echo-Ten was a security system for the castle.

_ I’m not ENTIRELY lying, _ he reassured himself.  _ The defense system I told him about really DOES exist, and Echo-Ten IS a security system in its own right. _

“Regretting my entire existence,” Hector responded, rubbing his temples. He had a killer headache,  _ again. _ But damn if he wasn’t going to try and shrug it off.

“You’re always doing that. Anything new?”

_ Oh, REALLY nice of you, Five. _

“We’re trying to figure out what to do next.” He sighed and took out his pager-

“Is that a goddamn pager.”

Fucking fantastic. Tungsten had seen it.

“Yes? Technically?” Really, the thing was more of a digital planner, he hardly ever used it for actual pager things, but it was easier to internally describe it as a pager, so he’d just decided “fuck it, this is a pager.”

“You still use a  _ pager _ .” With his wound healed over, he was actually feeling better - enough to make fun of Hector again, which would hopefully help him get a little more of his energy back. “Aren’t you a genius mad scientist? Shouldn’t you be using a state-of-the-art smartphone?”

Hector surprised him by raising his head and staring him right in the eyes, expression completely level.

“Smartphones have GPS trackers. Pagers do not.”

Tungsten shrugged, stretching one arm and accidentally causing his shoulder to make a gross-sounding popping noise. “Okay. You got me there. So, what’s your pager say we should do next?”

_ Do I strike you as an organized person, or are you just making fun of me again? _ Hector was starting to get concerned about Tungsten again. He hadn’t gotten a concussion, right?

“Uh, nothing yet.” He took out the stylus and sort of, without meaning to, started chewing on it nervously. “Any ideas?”

All he got was another shrug. “I don’t know. You’re kind of the designated team leader.”

“Oh yeah, and that’s why you’re so goddamn stellar at sticking to any plans I come up with.”

Tungsten sighed. “I… don’t want to do this argument again.”

“Neither do I. But you  _ do _ need to be better at that.” Hector hadn’t really meant to say that last part out loud, but here he was. At least Tungsten seemed to be taking it better than he would’ve, if the roles had been reversed.

Then again,  _ he _ actually tended to follow through on plans, so, a non-issue.

He closed his pager and shoved it in his pocket hastily, not wanting to be made fun of even  _ more _ because, look, sometimes his archrival was  _ just mean _ and he didn’t need that in his life.

“You mentioned that there was a sniper you wanted to deal with,” he said, still chewing on the stylus. Tungsten apparently just picked up death like a ball rolling down a hill picked up speed. Or something.

_ That was a really bad metaphor, _ his internal logic told him. _ Let’s not do that again. _

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure they were hired to take care of me, specifically.” He was twirling a twig between his fingers in what almost seemed like a nervous gesture. No, it was  _ definitely _ a nervous gesture. Hector had kind of gotten used to thinking of Tungsten as this unflappable snark machine of death, but after everything had gone to shit - not so much.

“Because…?”

_ That’s a good question. Why AM I sure that they were hired after me? _ He idly tapped his free hand against the ground, coming close to making a drumbeat with the dirt and the stick in his hand.

“Okay. So, you know how if someone’s looking at me, I can teleport?”

Hector nodded silently. He’d sort of been hoping for something a little more than that, since he’d sworn off of monologuing during the whole Karyn debacle.

...Then again, that had been a disaster, so maybe it was okay to monologue after all.

“I didn’t pick out the sniper’s eyes on me until maybe a second or two before the first shot was fired.” He closed his eyes, trying to picture the scene as clearly as possible. “And when I started endshifting to avoid the fire, their eyes pretty much tracked immediately to where I was. Again, about a second or two after I changed position each time.”

“So they’re a professional,” Hector said, and then internally winced. Five would be  _ very _ pissed about him calling a “rival sniper” a professional. Even though it was true.

“Yeah.” Tungsten nodded. “They’ve probably dealt with halfworld- er, half-Enders - before. And one other thing.”

A glint in what little light there was. Cold metal.

“Pretty sure they had a metal eye.”

“Hm,” Hector raised a hand to his headset to ping Five, then stopped. Best work out what he and Tungsten were doing before they got involved.

“You’re actually going to help me, then?” He crossed his fingers, accidentally breaking the stick in half as he did so. Fucking oops.

“Sure,” Hec said. “Provided you don’t mind getting shot at a bit more.”

_ I mind a LOT, actually _ , is what he wanted to say.  _ I’m sick of getting sniped at. Why don’t YOU give it a try? _

“Depends on why,” was what Tungsten actually said.

* * *

 

“Log One of Project Blindside. It’s-”

“Oh my God, Boss, not everything needs a fancy project name,” Five interjected, basically  _ immediately  _ throwing Hector off of his A-game. Here he was, just trying to be organized and cool, and Five was just… just being Five. Just being Five so much.

“Guys. Work it out later.” Having the pair bickering over comms was absolutely infuriating when Tungsten was steeling himself to get shot at. Again. For the… third time this week?

The fact that he’d lost track of how many times people were shooting at him was a travesty. Absolutely awful. But here he was. Sitting outdoors and drinking grapefruit juice from a basically-abandoned cafe, at the ass-crack of dawn, waiting for someone to shoot him.

He had to hand it to Hector, there was  _ nobody _ here, and he could spot at least three vantage points that’d make great places for someone to shoot at him from. Also, the grapefruit juice actually tasted like it was from a grapefruit. So at least the guy had good taste in dramatic locations.

“Bella, run me through everyone’s roles again?”

“Sure thing, chump.” He could hear the whirring noise of Five’s hovering drone through their earpiece, and felt just a little bad for them, because that was probably pretty annoying.

“Hex, you’re securing the perimeter, making sure no civs get hurt - because for  _ some reason _ you’ve decided to care about that now - and calculating possible hiding spots for our metal-eye bastard. Best team member Bella Donna will be zeroing in on the sniper’s position and getting a read on his identity via pictures, some clever dark-web browsing and also basic tech literacy. Freak of the week is on backup in case CK decides to get himself injured again.”

“And…?” Tungsten prompted, even though he knew exactly what his role in this was and he didn’t really want to hear it again.

“CK’s role is to get shot at and not die.”

Yeah. There it was.

He sighed and closed his eyes, concentrating on whoever was watching him. Five from the skies. Hector from a bush. Drei from a different bush. Some random guy-

He put the grapefruit juice down and half-leapt, half-fell off his chair as a shot cracked through the air.

_ Here we go again. _

“Sniper’s got a high vantage point,” Hector muttered, audio log still open because he was  _ going to record everything this time goddamnit. _ “Looks like they’re pretty secure in whatever spot they’ve got. CK, move west by about two yards.”

“Doing my-” vwoop “-best,” Tungsten shouted, and Hector winced. “Bella, if you can, maybe turn CK’s mic down. He’s peaking.”

“Sure thing, Boss.” The audio feedback from Tungsten became a lot more muffled, and that particular distraction became a lot less goddamn annoying.

“Angle deviated a little. We’re zeroing in. Bella, check the crane over to the north quadrant?”

“I got someone. Exposed construction strut. He’s lying down on it, got a rifle-”

“Please don’t describe the sniper in lurid detail. I’m almost positive that’s him.” Hector was starting to get fidgety. The sooner this was over with, the better.

“Roger that. I have all the shots I need. Are we good?”

“Yeah. CK, we’re out.”

_ Thank FUCK. _

Tungsten had legitimately never been happier to disengage from combat before. Finally he’d know who the hell was shooting at him. And also he wouldn’t be shot at anymore. Maybe.

He closed his eyes and pictured their makeshift campsite, then fell backwards onto the forest floor, raising clumps of earth. Less disorienting this time, and the sound of very small birds chirping was  _ infinitely _ preferable to the sound of someone shooting at him.

“I’m back at base,” he said, raising one arm to his head to send the message before just sort of deciding that lying on the ground wasn’t such a bad idea. Actually it was pretty comfortable. Actually maybe he could just sleep here for a little.

“Drei, you’re on backup, I’m uh, gonna take a nap,” he said, and then switched his earpiece off quickly before Hector could start yelling at him.

Which Hector was trying very hard not to do as he extracted himself from his bush, picking twigs and leaves from his hair, only to hear Tungsten decide to just go to sleep when there was still a  _ sniper out for him _ .

“FFFFFFFF-” he nearly broke, then reminded himself that he was  _ also _ a wanted man “-Fffive. Five.”

“Yeah, homeslice?”

“Any word on the sniper?”

“He’s packing up his stuff. Actually, oop, no, he’s sitting down and taking a sandwich out of his pocket. He’s, uh, having lunch. Apparently.”

_ Goddamned brilliant. ANOTHER madman I need to deal with. _

“Not what I meant. Do you know  _ who _ he is?”

“I’m narrowing it down. Google image search is giving me a bunch of characters from Blade Runner and shit. Also a lot of Pinterest results.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Hector responded, a bit too tired to actually bother with sounding annoyed or disdainful (or, really, any emotion besides tired). How long had it been since he’d actually slept, anyway? Logically speaking, it couldn’t have been more than half a day, since he’d slept late into the afternoon to prepare himself to be ridiculously nocturnal for the heist, but it felt like years.

...Which was probably why he was mad at Tungsten for falling asleep.

He sighed and tried to stretch out a bit more, ignoring the purple-and-black shape moving out of her bush on the opposite side of the (Site? Scene? Whatever you called an area where you arranged for someone to dodge sniper fire?) and cryptid-style dashing into the forest. Whatever Drei was doing, he was too tired to care.

_ I’m just gonna also head back to camp, _ he decided. Maybe he’d be able to take a nap or something like Tungsten was doing. It frankly wasn’t fucking fair that the half-Ender got two naps in one day. Sure, he’d gotten shot, but Hector was on the run from the entire-ass government probably, and those two  _ had _ to even out.

Right?

“Batshit insane,” he heard Five mutter over their comm, conveniently snapping him out of his weird tired state and back into semi-panic mode.

“Pardon?” He was already on his feet and out of the bush, walking towards camp so he could wake up Tungsten. If  _ he _ didn’t get to sleep, then-

“The sniper. I figured out who he is. He is  _ batshit insane. _ ”

_ Great! Fucking great! Amazing! I hate it! AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHHHH _

“I need a little more context than that,” he somehow managed to say instead of blurting out a streak so blue that the bit in Tungsten’s hair would seem pale by comparison.

“Okay, so the guy we’ve got is, uh, his name is Skalde. Real piece of work, does most jobs for anyone who pays him well enough, and - here’s the kicker - hunts people with respawn  _ as a hobby _ . He doesn’t even get paid for it half the time. He- he just  _ does that _ . For  _ fun _ .” 

Five’s voice was vaguely shaky, and Hector knew well why - Five  _ themself _ had respawn. Maybe not Yoglabs-sponsored respawn, but they seemed to be able to reform from most semi-lethal injuries. Helpful in most cases, probably mildly terrifying in this one.

“Okay, so he hunts people with respawn. It’s not like anyone knows you fall under that category, you’re not registered in any systems  _ period _ , let alone as-”

“You don’t  _ get  _ it. This guy has - he’s a fucking reverse Santa who keeps a list of people and kills them in his spare time! He’s probably devised traps or some shit to keep respawners locked up ad infinitum! And he’s - sitting there, on that beam,  _ eating a fucking sandwich!” _

Well, when they put it like  _ that _ , yeah. Maybe not great.

“Look. That does sound serious, but-” A point struck him. If he could just check something really quickly, he might be able to talk this out with Five just a little.

“Hex to CK, requesting input on the current situation. Repeat, Hex to CK.”

Nothing. Tungsten had turned his commlink off again. For once, Hector actually wasn’t angry about that.

“Look,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and changing channels back to Five, “Skalde’s not the only one we have to be worried about. Hell, maybe if we gather up enough money, he’ll flip over to our side. But between you, Drei, and Echo-Ten, we’ve got a fair few surprises up our sleeves in terms of reinforcements, okay?”

“Mm.” They sounded thoughtful, but that was better than being panicked. “I still don’t  _ get _ the whole Echo-Ten thing. He’s kind of freaky? Keeps referring to himself with the royal We, has a notepad and is scribbling notes on  _ everything _ in the base.”

Hec allowed himself a brief snort of laughter. “You should be getting along with him, then. You’re also the type to take notes, after all.”

They sighed. “Boss, it’s really weird having to keep an eye on a clone that’s part you, okay? He keeps looking at me like he’s unsure if he should order me around or snark at me.”

_ Mental note - Echo-Ten maybe has some identity issues to work out. Probably a good idea to avoid direct contact with him. _

“So he’s not ready yet. That’s fine. Given the donors, he should be pretty adaptable, maybe even field-ready in a day or two.” He pushed through another layer of underbrush as he headed back into the forest, keeping an eye out for Drei. “Echo-Ten is an ace up our sleeve. We just have to wait for the right moment to deploy hi-”

Was that a rustle of purple in the bushes? Maybe not. Possibly so. Best to change subjects.

“Anyway, though, can we pay off Skalde? It’d be great to have another person on our team.”

“Aw, c’mon Boss, you’ve already got yourself a great sniper right here. Two of ‘em is hardly balanced team comp.” Five’s pouty voice was all talk. They were back to their usual snarky self, and Hector was glad for it.

“We have someone who thinks he’s a tank and isn’t, the world’s creepiest healer, someone who’s better at planning than actually doing, and you. A second sniper isn’t going to fuck over our team composition any more than it’s already been fucked.”

“Point taken. Thank you for calling me competent in a really round-about way.” He heard typing noises from Five and was almost entirely sure that they were already headed back to the castle base, if not there already. Godsfuck, that drone apparently moved fast.

“Okay, yeah, we can flip Skalde. Doesn’t say how much his rates are or anything, but he’ll take money to switch sides.” More typing noises. They were probably just doing that to sound like a cool hacker.

“...Helpful. Okay, you keep watch on Echo-Ten, I’m going to head back to our campsite and… try not to die, I guess?”

“Yeah, don’t let the one-person freakshow murderize you. Kaythanksbye.”

Geez. Hector hadn’t even  _ mentioned _ Drei, and Five was already getting touchy. This maybe didn’t bode super well.

He sighed and pressed on through the forest. Campsite. One foot in front of the other. Not thinking about how he was pretty much alone right now. Definitely not thinking about how Tungsten might have been the only thing stopping Drei from killing him.

His footsteps slowed as he started thinking about it, silently cursing himself for doing so.

_ You are a goddamned idiot, you know that? _

He wasn’t sure if that was his own inner voice or someone in the past. Honestly, he was so tired that it could’ve been his future self yelling at him and he wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at it.

_ I mean, it’s an indisputable fact. I’m a mad scientist with memory issues. My own creation operates my computer tech better than I do, I got thwarted by an inferior clone of mine, and now I can’t even clear my own name! _

Hector suddenly very much wanted to lie down on the forest floor and dissolve into a less sapient life form. Maybe a slime mold. Slime molds were competent. They got things done.

He wiped his nose off on one of his sleeves and readjusted his goggles back over his eyes. Tungsten and Five’d probably make fun of him if either of them knew he’d been close to crying, and he’d be damned before he showed any sign of weakness around -

“ _ hector? _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY. I KNOW IT'S A CLIFFHANGER. IT'S NOT A BIG ONE. HECTOR IS FINE AND DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO GET MURDERED BY 3-B. PROBABLY. MAYBE.
> 
> we're rapidly wrapping up the Tungsten Gets Shot At arc! i mean, he's going to keep getting shot at in general, this is an actiony story and tungsten is an easy target because he's tall, but the sniper thing is looking somewhat like it's going to be a thing of the past! famous last words!
> 
> be gay do minecraft leave kudos if you enjoyed and a like if you want to yell/fuel this beautiful hector trainwreck


	6. vm-6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit. it's finally done.
> 
> this chapter's a little scattered because it took me five fucking months to write! i swear the next update probably won't take as long. probably.
> 
> apologies for making y'all wait so long for what's mostly filler and/or foreshadowing.

Tungsten woke up in the wrong place.

The first thing that hit him is that it was  _ dark _ . Not even any particular color of dark, something that he could squint through, no distinguishable features in whatever dim area this was. It was just a weird, nebulous dark.

He stood up, somehow, despite the fact that he couldn’t really tell if there was ground beneath him, and tried to get a better look around.

Nope. Still dark.

_ Great. I died in my sleep. _ It wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion to come to when he’d been on the edge of death so frequently lately. Maybe the sniper had followed him back somehow, maybe the initial bullet had been poisoned, maybe he’d just had a heart attack. But he felt pretty dead, more so than usual.

So this was just wonderful. Just… brilliant.

He moved forwards. Walking. He was definitely walking. He could hear his shoes tapping against what sounded like stone, and from the echo around him it was… not a tall or wide corridor, but very long. Tall enough that he could walk without having to duck his head constantly, though.   


Tungsten reached upwards, tried to touch where he thought the ceiling might be, and felt nothing but the air. Reaching out to the side caused a similar result. It felt like, in whichever direction he tried to go, he wasn’t going to hit a wall. It was just perpetually out of reach, and he was lost in the darkness with a stone floor beneath him.

He felt a sudden pang of panic, something deep in his gut as the wound in his stomach shifted somehow. Nobody’s eyes were on him, he’d know that, but he was still being watched. Something was aware of his presence here, and it didn’t feel all too friendly.

The worst part wasn’t that, though. The worst part was that, with this sudden shift in perception, he was damn near certain that he was currently alive. He could feel his heart beating, hear himself breathing. Something on his lower neck, beneath his shirt, pulsed gently.

“Drei?” His voice came out hoarsely in the air of nothing. In the fog, he realized, because that’s what this darkness was. Thick fog.

There was no response, and his stomach sank. If their link had been severed, he was  _ very _ screwed. He didn’t know where he was, he couldn’t teleport without someone looking at him, and he had no contact to anyone.

Tungsten wasn’t dead yet, but he might as well be.

He took another step forwards, pushing aside his nerves. That didn’t work, being scared, and it wasn’t going to start working now. If he died here, he was taking  _ something _ down with him.

So he took a deep breath and focused his mind to a clear point, trying to intentionally do what he usually tried not to show. If this was a hostile place, then he’d be a hostile person, or maybe less of a person in this case.

**“All right, jackass,** **_SHOW YOURSELF_ ** **.”**

Something leapt at him from the shadows, something shapeless but angry, and he instinctively reached out with his bare hands. Not having weapons was an issue, but he had a lot of pent-up anger that he’d bottled up - it was time to make Molotovs out of that shit.

It was tiny. Eight-legged and tiny. A spider.  _ Just a spider _ .

Tungsten ripped it off of himself with one fluid motion, heard a wet  _ crunch _ as it hit a distant wall, and took another step forward, jaw cracking further as his vision blurred, became strange and grim. He couldn’t see much, but he didn’t need to. He didn’t need to see to get rid of these things.

Everything was a blur of movement and attacks, every motion slicing through the thick fog as he tore through attacker after attacker, figure after figure between him and some way out of this nightmare -

_ Nightmare. _

He hadn’t woken up after all.

“Thank goodness you remembered,” someone said, and he lifted his head, confused. Was that Drei he’d heard? It was certainly a similar voice, had the same sort of quality to it, but it wasn’t nearly as warped-sounding. And it wasn’t Five, because they’d never be so polite, but…

The fog changed color and consistency, from a deep colorless darkness to pale white. The ground under his feet fell out from under him, even though he was still standing on  _ something _ . And he was face-to-face with the person who’d been talking to him.

“You nearly lost yourself there,” they said.

Tungsten didn’t really have anything to say in response to that. Partly because they were right, partly because the figure in front of him looked… well, even worse than Drei, if he was being honest. They were definitely related - the same hair color and general face structure, the same dot eyebrows that Five had, but otherwise this person looked more like some wandering zombie than a purple-tinted clone. Sure, he had a strong stomach, but to see someone this emaciated, to the point where they had several sharp bones stabbing straight out through their body at incorrect angles, was still pretty gut-churning.

In fact, he was somewhat tempted to ask them how in the fresh hell they were alive, but that felt exceedingly rude towards someone who’d snapped him out of… whatever state that had been. Speaking of which.

**“...Where am I?”** His voice was still cut with Ender distortion, and he grimaced, raising one hand to try and pop his jaw back into place.

They frowned, raising their one arm to brush some of the hair away from their eye. “You’re in the Outer Lands. And before you ask, I only have the vaguest inkling why, and it’s more of a theory than a fact.”

_ The fucking what _ . He’d never heard of an “Outer Lands” - the Farlands, maybe, but those didn’t look  _ anything _ like this place. This person had somehow managed to make him even more confused than before.

He opened his mouth to try and ask for clarification, then decided that it’d probably cause things to make even less sense, given the way this was going. Basics first, and anyway, there was something bugging him from the second he’d heard this person’s voice.

“So who are you, anyway?”

They blinked, looking somewhat surprised, as if they hadn’t expected someone to ask that question and weren’t quite sure how to go about answering it. In fact, Tungsten’s gut told him that was exactly what was going on.

“Ah - I’m Drei’s brother, I think that’s the best way to put it. Or,  _ was _ , at any rate.”

“So, are you… the first one? The first clone?” He winced. That was a pretty tactless way of saying what he was wondering, but it was out of his mouth now.

The clone didn’t seem to mind, simply shaking their head. “No, I’m not. I’m her  _ younger _ brother. 4.” They shifted, and Tungsten realised that, in addition to all the bones they already had poking out of them,  _ 4’s lower half was nonexistent _ . Or, rather, they didn’t have any defined legs, more of a mass of purple flesh and bone that was propelling them.

Yikes.

He steeled himself, tried to get into his usual snarky state and cover up the uncertainty he’d been feeling before. It couldn’t really be considered centering himself when that consisted of trying to ignore 99% of the feedback his body was giving him, but he was going to try.

“I’d, uh, say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but most of this experience has honestly been kind of shit. How do I leave?” A bit harsh, maybe - but 4 didn’t seem particularly offended. They just sighed.

“Right now? Someone needs to pull you out. We wait.”

* * *

 

Five turned away from their laptop and closed it, getting up from the couch with a grimace. They weren’t really reassured about this whole situation, but Hector was… well, he was Hector, and sometimes they just needed to pretend they were doing fine so he felt better.

Speaking of doing fine, or at least  _ thinking _ of it… they really needed to check on Echo-Ten. The guy had been weirdly quiet since they’d gotten back, hadn’t even checked in, and that was probably bad. Maybe bad? Who knows. He was a weird clone, it wasn’t in Five’s business to predict the actions of anyone that wasn’t their own damn self.

They headed down to the Secret Secret Lab, scanning their keycard and everything, then pushed open the door to the empty room they’d told Echo-Ten he could use. They hadn’t  really been sure what he was going to use it for, but they assumed it would probably help the guy feel at home, or at least like he had a place he was in.

The second Five looked inside, their stomach sank, dropping to the ground like a lead balloon. What they were seeing in front of them was all too familiar to them.

Scraps of material and newspaper printouts. Hasty scribbles on sticky notes and spare binder clips being used to hang things on the board. Red strings everywhere, a dysfunctional web, and -

Echo-Ten turned around hastily, shoving his hands into the pockets of the labcoat that Five had passed along to him. It fit him better than Hector, and it was clean still, but in that moment they were seeing the same thing they saw maybe once each month.

His eyes were wide, suspicious, hair a mess from nervously running hands through it over and over, the posture of someone who was ready to flip over a table and bolt.

“You really are half Hector, huh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The clone’s demeanor changed as he straightened up, picking up the crowbar Five had given him and leaning on it, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why are you here, anyway, do you need something from us?”

“I figured I’d check on you,” they responded, taking another look around the room. “And it looks like that was a good idea.”

Echo-Ten stepped back as they approached the Pepe Silvia board, inspecting it closely, one hand tracing the connections from piece to piece.

_ Let’s see, we’ve got… Yoglabs, the newspaper article about their cloning staff being fired, sticky notes about something called “clone creep”, pictures of people with redacted facial features… _

“Well, it’s a start,” Five said, taking a step back. “But there’s nothing new up there.”

“Nothing new?” Echo-Ten gritted his teeth, one hand clenched as he stared daggers at them. “Do you have something you’re not  _ telling _ us?”

They just nodded. “Yeah. Uh, I didn’t think you’d do this, but I… Hm.”

He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate and filter out pieces from Hector. The other part of him was pretty much useless. He needed Hector’s thoughts, he needed -

“It’s something he told you you can’t show to anyone else, right?” That would have to be why Five was hesitating. Because he wasn’t  _ just _ Hector.

“Yeah.” They nodded. “But I think, because you got this far anyway, it… only makes sense.” Before he could say anything else, Five was already headed to the door, holding it open only a few moments for Echo-Ten to slip through. “You can’t tell Boss I showed you this, though. He’ll get really mad.”

“Not a word.”

Five headed upstairs, into an abandoned wing of the castle. This was more their side of the hideout, half crumbled away and exposed to the elements, still damp from the rainstorm a few nights ago. A few doors down, there was a space that had been set up as a conference room at one point, but wasn’t anymore.

“Okay, Ten.” They were facing him again, but their expression was blank, unreadable. “Try not to freak out too much.”

Not a great nickname. Both he and Five could tell that it had fallen flat, but that wasn’t really what took up his priorities when he stepped into the room.

Because he was looking at… red strings, a web with gaps in it, bits and pieces of newspaper articles and sticky notes and printed-out documents and scraps of papers and old photographs, and -

He felt Five put one hand on his shoulder and realized that he was leaning on the table for support, one hand gripping it so hard that his muscles ached.

“It happens about once every month,” they said, clearly more to themself than to him. “Boss’ll work himself up into a state where he thinks he’s got everything figured out and he goes radio silent, locks himself in a room and starts making connections. And then I have to pull him out and tell him, it’s always the same one, if you figure out anything new I’m going to add it to this board, here you go.”

Five turned away, trying to shove their hands into pockets they unfortunately didn’t have. “Stare at it as long as you like. Don’t mess it up or I’ll kick your shit in, orders be damned.”

“Five-”

“I’ll be in the control room when you’re done.” They didn’t turn their head back to look at him this time. Honestly, they couldn’t.

It’d be the same facial expression it always was, and they didn’t have the heart to tell Echo-Ten that they didn’t have any answers.

* * *

 

Hector, as per usual, was on the verge of a panic attack.

If he’d idly wished he was a slime mold before, the voice ringing through the trees made him  _ really _ want to be one, because being alone in a forest with Drei was basically a nightmare scenario. Any bit of snide self-deprecation his brain had been inflicting on him had turned to a low, terrified undercurrent of  _ You’re going to fucking die here Drei probably hates you she’s going to kill you for what you did and nobody will ever find your body and _

He somehow remembered to take a deep breath and tune out the internal screaming. If he was going to die, whatever. Long past due, anyway.

“Drei?” Hector’s voice sounded more like a squeak, and he winced.  _ That _ right there was something he couldn’t bear, that high pitch in his voice making long-ignored dysphoria spike right back the fuck up again. Damnit. Damnit, damnit, damnit.

_ “are you all right?” _

He couldn’t quite tell where her voice was coming from, which was another worry to shovel onto his heaping plateful of anxiety, but that didn’t quite matter as much to him as what Drei had actually asked him stuck in his brain.

“Am I,” he repeated back, trying to parse what in the fresh hell she was actually asking him, “all right.”

He ran a hand through his hair, made sure his goggles were firmly on his face, set his jaw. Weird thing to be asked right before being shanked, but he was at least going to take the opportunity to square himself up.

“I’m fine. Shouldn’t you be watching the campsite?”

A purple blur dropped to the ground directly in front of him - apparently that was Drei’s  _ thing _ now, just dropping in out of  _ fucking nowhere _ \- and stretched out, taking her usual shape of mostly humanoid save for some one-winged angel body horror bullshit.

_ “i am. we’re pretty near it.” _ She had her hands in her pockets and was… sizing him up, it felt like, though it was hard to tell when he couldn’t actually see her eyes. Okay, yeah, he was definitely going to die here.

Hector shoved both hands in the main pockets of his labcoat, accidentally nicking one of his fingers on his bloodbound tool disc in the process. If he hadn’t been in front of his ultimate, terrifying demise, he probably would’ve started swearing right then and there.

“Okay, then I’m just going to, uh, go… to the campsite?” he tried, backing up a step (which, of course, was not towards the campsite, because nothing was ever easy).

“ _ you’re going the wrong way. _ ”

Well, this objectively sucked. Still, Drei hadn’t outright tried to murder him  _ yet _ , so maybe if he just walked on past her he’d get to the campsite without great bodily harm coming to him. All he had to do was keep his head up and walk on by. One step. Then another.

“ _ hang on a second. _ ”

Ah. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

Drei extended her hand to block him from going any further, and he flinched back instinctively, not even bothering to parse  _ why _ he was doing that. Honestly, he could barely figure out why he was doing anything at all, including just generally existing. 

“ _ i wanna ask you something _ .”

This was the nightmare scenario. This was just, really infinitely bad.

Hector felt his legs start to wobble and locked them tighter, forcing himself to keep standing upright, because there was _no way_ he was going to let himself fall over on the ground or anything similarly stupid.  
“Go ahead,” he said, immediately regretting his decision as thousands of pre-murder movie one-liner questions popped into his mind. He should’ve just, like, walked away. Fuck.

“ _ do you hate me?” _

Drei cocked her head to the side, still with that unreadable expression on her face, and he felt every single millisecond slow to a crawl as he tried to figure out what this was, what was going on. This wasn’t something you got asked before being killed. This wasn’t  _ anything _ he would have -

He’s back in the lab, roughly two years ago. Before the time gates, before Tungsten, before Five. Staring at Specimen Echo 3-B, whose wide grin spreads past its matted hair as it extends one hand and asks  _ “are you afraid of me, hector?” _

And he is. This  _ thing _ he’d made has learned too fast, copied his mannerisms and learned to speak in a matter of days, it walks the halls at night and sings wordlessly, and he’s scared. Scared of whatever it is he’s made, because it’s past his comprehension.

But he doesn’t hate it -  _ her _ . He couldn’t possibly.

“No?” His response came out painfully high again. Hard to tell which was worse, being in front of Drei or losing his nerve entirely. “No. I don’t hate you.”

That was apparently the last straw for his legs, and also brain, as the stress and lack of sleep finally caught up to Hector and he pitched over, vision fuzzing out as he barely managed to catch himself from smashing his head on the ground.

* * *

 

That was the campsite. Two unconscious people - one vigilante and one mad scientist - and a strange purple shape.

Hector had just passed out, right in front of her. Swayed slightly and then fallen entirely over; she’d caught him before he hit the ground, but only  _ just _ . Good thing, or her little sibling… Five… might’ve been pretty mad.

She didn’t dare ping Five directly. For one, she didn’t have a commlink, and even if she did it was pretty unlikely that Five would want to talk to her.

So she padded over to Tungsten, bare claw-feet on the forest floor. He should be all right, probably, might be having some weird dreams but-

Didn’t even take her opening her mouth, though. Barely took her closing the distance for a meter before Tungsten sat bolt upright, clawing at the air for something, mouth caught with distortion.

**“Wait-** ”

He looked around his surroundings, startled to be back. Gone was the blank infinity of the pale white fog, and the purple figure in front of him was Drei. Just Drei.

Tungsten sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets. “So, you went and got Hec back, right?”

_ “yeah, he’s over there _ .” Drei pointed back over her shoulder towards a somewhat ragdolled Hector currently face-down in the dirt, and he had to stifle a snort of laughter. Yes, of  _ course _ he was going to flip the man over to make sure he didn’t suffocate while unconcious, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to cherish the image of his archrival absolutely passed the fuck out and looking ridiculous while it lasted.

...He still got up and flipped the guy onto his back gingerly, though. Luckily, he didn’t wake up - seems he was out pretty cold for at least a little while.

“He didn’t hit his head, right? I’d prefer if he was alive.”

“ _ i think he’s just exhausted _ .”

“Mm.” Should he talk to her? Explain what - no,  _ who _ \- he saw in his dreams? Or was that just going to make things worse?

It would probably just make things worse. He sighed and sat back onto the log, trying to piece together what to do next. Best to page Five, probably.

“CK to Bella. What did you guys find out about the sniper?”

Five’s response was faint and monotone, like they  _ clearly _ had something better to be doing. “He can be paid off. No idea how to raise funds, though.”

Tungsten shrugged, and then realized that Five definitely couldn’t see the gesture. Whoops. “I can probably handle it.”

“You’re gonna go earn money with a gaping chest wound? _Really_?”  
“It’s not _gaping_ anymore, and I’m not doing anything high-risk. I’m just going to find some fresh venison and pawn it off to the closest testificate butcher.”

Five made a satisfied  _ hrmph _ sound. “Hey, looks like you actually have a tiny bit of common sense. That’s something that probably won’t get you killed.”

“Thanks?”

“Don’t be an idiot and get stabbed by a fucking deer or something.” Their commlink clicked off rather unceremoniously. Apparently they weren’t willing to discuss the details of the hunt further, which was… it was fine. They didn’t seem interested and that was okay.

Tungsten turned towards Drei. “You willing to watch Hec for a little longer?”  
“ _not a problem!_ ”

All right. Time to go make some money.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I WOULD LIKE TO GIVE A HUGE THANKS TO:
> 
> leo/mathonwys, goldgreenie/dualcolors, xeno, tide, and warden. y'all have been wonderful in encouraging me to Do Thing, even if at my own pace, and ilu all with my whole-ass heart and soul.
> 
> be gay do minecraft leave kudos if you enjoyed this and a review if you want to yell. every review sustains my inner life-force and brings me one step closer to Fic Ascension. i don't actually know what it is but it's the next perk on this skill tree apparently and i'm trying to unlock it

**Author's Note:**

> be gay do minecraft leave kudos if you enjoyed this and a review if you want to yell


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